RESPONSES TO BYRON IN THE WORKS OF THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELISTS:

Carol Anne White

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosphy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto

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Andrew Elfenbein's Byron and the Victorians(l995) is a full-length account of Victorian response to Byron and Byronism. This thesis builds upon his work by examining how three nineteenth-century novelists, Edward Bulwer, Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, responded to Byron in their fiction. Edward Bulwer's late Regency Bildunssroman, Pelham, The Adventures of a Gentleman (1828) is an example of Byron's pre-Victorian reception which shows how one Regency novelist inscribed Byronic figures in his fiction. Pelham also dramatizes the problematic conflict between male infatuation with Byronic figures and the Bilduncrsroman impulse. Charles Dickens responded to Byron and Byronism more than two decades later in his Victorian Bildunssroman, David Co~perfield

(1849/50). Like the later Bulwer, who was critical of Byronism in Ernest Maltravers(l837) and its sequel, Alice(1838), Dickens showed an ironlc, sometimes satirical detachmeni from Byronism. David Copperfield, however, also reveals Dickens' sense of the disempowering paralysis caused by a lingering nostalgic attachent to Byronic figures. Charlotte Brontë responded much more directly to Byron than her male i contemporaries. Writing satire, not romance, she extensively re-worked Byron's The Corsair in Shirley(1849), treating her Byronic "hero" with a cold detachment that was characteristic of other women novelists such as Mary Shelley and George Eliot. Shirley, with its Monday morning realism, is at once a Childe Harold-like lament and a Thackerayean satire on an age in which heroism seemed impossible. I would like to thank the University of Toronto for providing me with an Open Fellowship for three years. 1 would also like to express my sincere and deep thanks to my supervisor, Prof. F.T. Flahiff, who has been a kind and nurturing mentor, guiding my work for many years, sharing his insights, reading and re-reading my thesis, and spending far more time thinking about Bulwer Lytton than he or 1 ever intended. A special thank you to Tony Burgess, who increased my wariness of Louis Moore.

Finally, 1 would like to thank my husband, Paul, who believed in me. For Mum and Dad, who have always shared with me their love of books.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.

Chapter One Part One Echoes and Allusions ...... 5

Part Two "The Sentimental Measles": Edward Bulwer and Pelham ...... 33

Chapter Two "An Aching Heart": Charles Dickens and Copperfield ...... 87

Chapter Three Charlotte Brontë's Shirley: The Corsair Seen in the Sober Dam...... 152

Conclusion ...... 224

Works Cited ...... 231 Introduction

This thesis was conceived of before the publication of Andrew Elfenbein's Byron and the Victorians(l995). a full-length account of Victorian response to Byron and Byronism. Like Elfenbein's work, it examines çeveral nineteenth-century authors, it argues for the deeply persona1 nature of their responses, and it emphasizes the importance of literary mediation between Byron and his readers. Unlike Elfenbein's work, however, it is not intended to be a general study of the Victorian response to Byron. Nor does it attempt to provide a chronological survey of Byron's reptation in the nineteenth century. Rather, it extends Elfenbein's work by suggesting that certain nineteenth-century novelists, like Byron's periodical reviewers, were important mediators of Byronism.' Edward Bulwer, for instance, inscribed Byronic figures in his fiction, providing fictional Byronic models for later novelists to imitate and interpret. This thesis also explores Elfenbein's suggestion that male infatuation with Byron was as important as the more infamous female infatuation.' And it supports his claim that the stereotype of women's infatuation with Byronic heroes was just that, a stereotype. Lastly, this thesis challenges conventional forma1 boundaries between poetic and prose narrative. Byron was a poet who influenced novelists. Such as Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë were sensitlve to Byron's poetry and incorporated Byronic 2 images and tropes into their fiction.' The first chapter of this thesis considers specific aspects of Byron's early reception that influenced Victorian novelists, particularly Byron's perceived fraudulence and "mobilité." Since critical discussions of such Byronic figures as Brontë's Rochester have often used the term loosely, this study will also address the problem of the term "Byronic." It considers how the term "Byronic" was used by Byron's contemporaries and by later Victorian writers, and it examines the problernatic nature of twentieth-century usage of the term. Part Two of this chapter turns to Edward Bulwer and his extremely popular Pelham, The Adventures of a Gentleman(1828) as an example of Byron's pre- Victorian reception. Bulwer himself described his gothic hero, Reginald Glanville, as Byronic, an identification which gives historical veracity to the thesis' consideration of later Victorian novels whose Byronism is more subtlely introduced.

Chapter Two opens with a discussion of T.8. Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, Victorian male authors who turned away from Byron and Byronism in the 1830's. Their reactions provide a context for the chapter's central consideration of Charles Dickens. Chapter Two also introduces Bulwer's Ernest Maltravers(1837) and its sequel, Alice(1838), Bildunssromane that likely influenced Dickens' treatment of the Byronic in his mid-Victorian Bildunqsroman David Co~perfield(1849-50). Although Bulwer and Dickens show an ironic, sometimes satirical detachment from Byronism, their Bildunssromane show even more dramatically their sense of the disempowering paralysis caused by a lingering,

nostalgie attachment to Byronic figures. Chapter Three considers a female response to Byron and Byronism that challenges the stereotype of women's uncritical

infatuation with the poet. One of the Brontë sisters was an

obvious first choice for such a study, and since Jane Eyre and Wutherinq Heiqhts have been so often discussed, it turns to Charlotte Brontë's Shirley(1849), a realistic Victorian social novel that reads like a satire on Byronism, a cool Monday morning reassessment of Byronic figures. Brontë's methodology is entirely different from Bulwer's and Dickens'. Where they incorporate aspects of Byronism within their romantic fiction, she reworks and plays off The Corsair, finding in Byron's poetry the Law material to express her own artistic vision. Brontë's treatment of The Corsair provides a clue to her attitude. No longer under

the conventional, romantic spell of Byronism, she reassesses,

scrutinizes and disempowers her hero, even making him the object of comedy and farce. She also adopts a Thackerayan-Don Juanish

sceptical voice, and expresses her own Childe Harold-like disillusionment with heros and heroism. Chapter Three employs a different methodology than the previous chapter on Dickens, providing a detailed reading of Shirlev as a reworking of The Corsair. Such elaboration is crucial because of the extent and importance of Byron's poem in the novel, and because the Byronism in Shirley has not been discussed. Endnotes

l Elfenbein's account of Byron's Victorian response is underpinned by the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, particularly his The Field of Cultural Production(l993). His focus is on how institutions of cultural production (particularly the periodical press) mediated access to Byron. Victorian authors, he suggests, defined themselves against what they saw Byron as representing, responding particularly to Byron's representation of subjectivity. This thesis expands the concept of cultural mediation by showing the intertextual connection between Bulwer's novels and Dickens' David Copperfield. Elfenbein considers several Victorian writers(Bulwer, Disraeli, Wilde) who were "attracted to the homoerotic aspect of Byron's personality, as they understood itW(70). He expresses his suspicion that "male attraction to Byron was more widespread than surviving evidence indications"(70). In T. S. Eliot's terms, Charles Dickens created "figures" (or characters) that "belong to poetry. " In a "single phrase" he "set them wholly before us"("Wi1kie" 375). The same might be said of Charlotte Brontë, who relies on key images in her narrative prose. Byron himself challenged traditional formalistic boundaries by writing Don Juan, a verse-novel, and such Victorians as Elizabeth Barrett Browning followed his example by writing unconventional works such as Aurora Leiqh. Chapter One

Part One

Echoes and Allusions

. - he felt that Lady Kitty had defrauded him at lunch in favor of that great, ruffling, Byronic fellow Cliffe. . . . (Mrs. Humphrey Ward, The Marriase of William Ashe 191)

Allusions to the "Byronic" such as Mrs. Humphrey Ward's in her 1905 novel, The Marriase of William Ashe, arise from a long tradition of Byronic allusions in fiction. Such resonances occur in novels of the 1840's such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Evre(1847), Emily Brontë's Wutherinq Heiqhts(1847) and even William Thackeray's Pendennis(1848-50). Sensation novelists of the 1860's like Mary Elizabeth Braddon presented dashing Byronic heroine such as Aurora Floyd((Aurora Floyd(1862-3)). And realist novelists of the 1870's such as Anthony Trollope introduced heroines like Lizzie Eustace and Lucy Toogood, who dream of finding their Corsairs and Giaours(The Eustace Diamonds(1873), 5 6 The Last Chronicle of Barset(1873)). Such allusions suggest the immensity and enduring nature of Byron's influence and they reveal that responses to Byronism occurred within a wide context of social, historical and cultural signification. Lizzie Eustace's fictional Corsairs existed quite outside of Byron's actual texts. They were mid-century gentlemen- pirates who invited themselves into Lizzie's sitting-room, threatened to marry her, and were suspected of absconding with her jewels. Andrew Elfenbein explains the phenomenon of response to Byron in the first full-length study of the poet's Victorian

reception, Byron and the Victorians(l995). Byronism was, he argues, "an unprecedented cultural phenornenon" that reached out beyond Byron's texts. "Readers" of Byron responded to reviews of Byron's poetry, annotations, collections, illustrations and forgeries. They responded to the lore about Byron's life -- the biographies, legends, gossip and rumours. They created the stereotype of a Byronic hero, a problematic figure whose origins will be discussed. They saw the widespread imitation of Byron in the universities and Byronic dandyism in the drawing rooms. They participated in the fad of composing Byronic lyrics spontaneously.' And they witnessed the proliferation of commercial parapherrialia associated with his celebrity. As Elfenbein notes, Byron was commodified in plates, knick-knacks, pictures and other gimmicks now associated with twentieth-century superstars(48). Such allusions also suggest that Victorian novelists 7 presupposed an audience that shared with them a "portable library"' of Byroniana that included al1 the different aspects of Byron's reception. As modern readers removed from Victorian culture, we often lack this "portable library." We no longer have immediate access to the "earlier voice and its cave of resonant significance" (Hollander 65). Although we have Byron's texts, we have only a partial knowledge of how the poet was received by his public, how his works and biographies were read and interpreted at different times. When "such access is lost in a community of reading," as Hollander suggests, "what rnay have been an allusion may fade in prominence." Yet a "scholarly recovery of the context would restore the allusion, by revealing an intent as well as by showing meansH(65-66). These allusions also reveal that Byron's reception was dynamic and interactive. In Woifgang Iser's terms, Byron's readers processed or realized Byron's texts and Byronism to produce meaning(The Act of Readinq 68-9). Some Victorians took this process of creative interpretation one step further. They reproduced the poet by imitating him in their own lives. And they reproduced aspects of Byron's work by transforming existing texts into imaginative novels.' In Derrida's terms, Byron and Byronism were "iterable." They could be "re-read" and "re-written" with

"diverse meanings" and "plural effectsN(Bennett 227). Thus Disraeli reenacts Childe Harold's Pilgrimage on his Grand Tour. Trollope rewrites Byron's Corsairs and Giaours in The Eustace Diamonds. Elizabeth Mary Braddon recontextualizes "Mazeppa" in her eroticized portrait of a Victorian equestrienne in Aurora Floyd. In The Fiqure of Echo(1981), John Hollander uses the vocabulary of sounds and echoes to examine such transformations. Emphasizing, like Iser, the interactive nature of text reception, he describes how echoes alter and develop existing sounds. Allusions to "great" works of art are not merely trivial borrowings, but sounds that rebound across a gap of texts(61).

Like Hans Robert Jauss, Hollander also acknowledges that reception occurs within historical tirne,' Echoes are diachronie and synchronic. They can be delayed responses to the original voice and they can be more immediate responses to contemporary allusions -- echoes re-echoed. Often these voices are unpredictable and surprising; often they distort and significantly alter the voices as they interpret them; sometimes they echo satirically, reducing or "demythologizing" the original sounds . This thesis will be concerned with two related kinds of Byronic echoes in the Victorian period: biographical and literary. Some Iike Edward Bulwer were transformed by Byron, recreating the image of the poet by imitating him imaginatively. They did not merely iterate the mannerisms of their hero, but developed their own "Byronic" personae. Others like Dickens read and reread their Byron during different periods of their lives, rediscovering the poet in changing cultural climates. This thesis is concerned also with textual echoes or transformations. 9 Following Jausslsproposal that later works "can solve formal and moral problems left behind by the last work," we will see how Bulwer, Dickens and Charlotte Brontë reworked different aspects of Byronism in their fiction(32). Before turning to these biographical and fictional echoes, however, we will summarize William St Clair's analysis of Byron's changing readership during the Regency period. St Clair's calculations provide a context for Regency and later Victorian associations of Byron and Byronism with the satanic and the fraudulent. Then we will examine how nineteenth and twentieth century usages of the term "Byronic" have complicated critical discussions of Byron and Byronic heroes.

William St Clair, in his ernpirical study of Byron's readership, The Impact of Byron's Writings: An Evaluative Approach," determines which segments of British society read their Byron by calculating who could and could not afford to buy Byron's books during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Prior to 1816, Byron's quartos and octavos were out of range for most of the English public. Only the richest section of society could afford to buy Childe Harold's Pilqrimaqe 1 and 2, and evidence suggests that a large proportion of thîs group did read the poetls earliest poems. This group, St Clair argues, understood Childe Harold 1 and 2, The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos 10 and The Corsair to be poems about hopeless love. They saw Byron

as a romantic poet rather than a political poet or a poet of ideas. They particularly enjoyed Byron's short love poems. "Fare Thee Well," for instance, was frequently copied by ladies into their albums or commonplace books(l0). After 1816 and Byron's notorious separation and exile, this group largely rejected Byron as their favourite poet of romance in favour of writers like Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Moore. Byron, St Clair argues, was no longer considered a "safe" poet by a landed gentry class that preferred strong goverment, supported the royal family and profited from high grain prices. In the 1820's Byron attracted a different and much larger group of readers. Don Juan was available in three different sizes, one of which was available for a shilling, and was accessible to shopkeepers, tradesman, and skilled artisans. Between 1819 and 1828, 51 known editions of Don Juan(officia1 and pirated) appeared. If 1,000 copies were printed in the average edition, and five people read each copy, St Clair calculates, then 126,000 people read the poem. If the average edition printed 2,000 copies, as may be more likely, and ten readers read each copy -- which is also likely -- then an astounding 1,580,000 people read Don Juan during this decade. This fantastic popularity, St Clair argues, suggests that Don Juan "penetrated far deeper into the reading of the nation than any other modern book, with the possible exception of Tom Paine's Riqhts of ManU(l8). Byron, according to St Clair, thus had two distinctly 11 different audiences. Before-1816,he was read by the rich as a romantic poet of hopeless love. After 1816, he was read by the educated lower middle and upper working class who were interested in Don Juan, and uninterested in his earlier poetryO6 This dramatic change in Byron's readership does much to explain why Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate who wrote hexameters about George III's apotheosis into Heaven, identified Byron as a poet of the "Satanic School" in his preface to his A Vision of Judcrement. Southey, voicing the political sentiments of the richest segment of English society, viewed Byron as politically dangerous, morally reprehensible and even satanic. Byron had not fulfilled his reputation as a "safe" poet of love,

and was now to be typecast as a fraudulent poseur, an actor, a satanic voice of rebellion. Byron playfully responded to Southey by ironically assuming the satanic role given him in his own Vision of ~udsement(1822)~' The periodical press after 1818 also contributed to Byron's

reputation as a fraudulent actor. A Blackwood's contributer, likely Lockhart, sketches the following portrait of Byron as poseur, rnagician, and devil. After the publication of the controversial Beppo, he writes in 1818: You have flung off the last remains of the "regal port;" you are no longer one of "the great seraphic lords," that

sat even in Pandemonium, "in their own dimensions like themselves." You have grown weary of your fallen grandeur, and dwarfed your stature, that you might gain easier access, and work paltrier mischief. You may resume, if you will, your giant-height, but we shall not fail to recognize, in spite of al1 your elevation, the swollen features of the same pigmy imp whom we have once learned -- a lasting lesson -- not to abhor merely, and execrate, but to despise. You may wish, as heretofore, to haunt our imaginations in the shadowy semblance of Harold, Conrad, Lara, or Manfred: you rnay retain their vice, and their unbelief, and their restlessness; but you have parted irretrievably with the

majesty of their despair. We see you in a shape less sentimental and mysterious. We look below the disguise which has once been lifted, and claim acquaintance, not with the sadness of the princely masque, but with the scoffing and sardonic merriment of the ill-dissembling reveller beneath it. In evil hour did you step from your vantage- ground, and teach us that Harold, Byron, and the Count of Beppo are the same. (Lockhart(?) "Letter to the Author" 328-9) After the publication of the opening cantos of Don Juan, Lockhart predictably continues this derisive tone, commenting in 1819 that

Byron was "resolved to shew us that he is no longer a human being . . . but a cool unconcerned fiend, laughing with a detestable gleel'("Remarks" 513). He similarly remarks on the "wicked smiling face of Don Juan" and aàmiringly calls its author "a profligate, pernicious, irresistible, charming Devil"(John Bull's 83,91). Even a satirist like Thomas Love Peacock, who, like 13 Byron, belittles Southey's virtuous posing in such works as

Melincourt, highlights the fraudulence of Byronic posing. In his Niqhtmare Abbey(1818), he satirizes the poet's theatricality by portraying his Byron-figure, "Cypress,lt as a gloomy poseur who repeats empty phrases from Childe Harold. William Hazlitt, just before Byron's death, similarly emphasizes the poet's fraudulence, particularly questioning "Lord Byron's preposterous liberalism." Byron "may affect the principles of equality," he comments, "but he resumes his privilege of peerage upon occasion"(243). Related to Byron's reputation for theatrical posing was his perceived mobility, a quality that was emphasized by certain

Byron biographers of the 1820's and 1830's. Lady Blessington, who gained some popularity by exploiting her intimate involvement with Byron in her Conversations, memorably calls Byron a "perfect chameleon, possessing the fabulous qualities attributed to that animal, of taking the colour of whatever touches him"(71). With questionable credibility, she quotes Byron speaking of himself as a playful deceiver: "People take for qospel al1 I Say, and so away continually with false impressions. Mais n'importe! it will render the statements of rnv future bioqraphers more amusinq . . . One will represent me as a sort of sublime misanthrope, with moments of kind feelinq. This,

par example, is my favourite rôle. Another will portray me as a modern Don Juan; and a third . . . will . . 14 represent me as an amiable, ill-used gentleman, 'more sinned against than siming.' . . . But, joking apart, what I think of myself is, that 1 am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long, -- 1 am such a strange mélanqe of good and evil, that it would be difficult to describe me." (220 Byron was conscious of his changeableness, Blessington suggests, and asserted that it was "owing to the extreme mobilité of his nature, which yields to present impressions"(71). The term "mobilitéf1requires some explanation. Byron first used this term in Don Juan, describing the capricious Lady Adeline Amundeville: So well she acted, al1 and every part, By turns -- with that vivacious versatility, Which many people take for want of heart. They err -- 'tis merely what is called mobility, A thing of temperament and not of art, Though seeming so, from its supposed facility; And false -- though true; for surely they're sincerest, Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest. (DJ 16:817-24). In his notes to this canto, Byron also applied the term to himself and proposed that "it may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions at the same time without losinq the past; and is though something apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful and unhappy attributeN(DJ 769n). The 15 character of Don Juan also shares this quality with Lady Adeline Amundeville, He is described as "al1 things to al1 men," and "most things to al1 women, / Without the coxcombry of certain She men"(16:610;14:248). In his discussion of the mobility referred to in Don Juan, Jerome McGann proposes that this quality is not only a psychological attribute, but also a social susceptibility, and that these two aspects of mobility are "symbiotic and interdependentH("Byron" 71): Mobility appears as a set of social graces, a capacity

to charm and to be al1 things to al1 men, but it arises, apparently, from a ground of "sincerity" in those kinds of people "Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest." Yet it appears the very height of insincerity and calculation. Which is it: "a thing of" one's spontaneous "temperament," or of one's role-playing and "art"? 1s it "false" or is it "true"? (71) For some biographers and later interpreters of the Byronic, mobility carried with it this twofold meaning. Blessington, as we have seen, simultaneously depicted Byron as a chmeleon, unconsciously assuming the colours of his environment, and as an actor, deliberately playing a variety of roles. Leigh Hunt, attacking Byron for his treatment of Hunt in Italy, uses the term in Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries(1828). He spitefully ignores its double meaning and portrays Byron merely as an insincere, fickle and heartless 16 actor. Byron's conversation, Hunt comments, "was haunted with a perpetual affectation, and Che] could not talk sincerely." He freely quotes Byron confessing that he is convinced by the last speaker, and then argues that Byron admired only the convenient and the ornamental.

He was moved to and fro, not because there was any

ultimate purpose which he would give up, but solely because it was most troublesome to him to sit still and resist. "Mobility," he has said, in one of his notes to "Don Juan," was his weakness; and he calls it ''a very painful attribute." It is an attribute certainly

not very godlike. (42

As Elfenbein puts it, Hunt portrays Byron as having "no essential self, only a succession of po~es"(78).~ In what became the standard biography of Byron, Letters and

Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of his Life(1830), Thomas Moore responds to Hunt by emphasizing Byron's susceptibility to impressions and downplaying the poet's insincerity. Byron was so

"various" and "contradictory," he suggests, "that he may be pronounced to have been not one but manym persons(643). Moore adopts the term "versatility" in preference to mobility, but makes it clear that his term encompasses the latter. He defines "versatility" as follows: A variety of powers almost boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them, -- a susceptibility of new impressions and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment 17 of genius, and an uncontrolled impetuosity, as well as from habit as temperament, in yielding to th-, -- such were the two greai and leading sources of al1 that varied

spectacle which his life exhibited. ( 645

Moore's definition accounts for both aspects of mobility, the power of display, and the susceptibility to impressions. Byron's fascination results less from his ability to perform than from his susceptibility to impressions that allows him to be entirely occupied with the person at hand. At these tirnes, "whatever was most agreeable in his nature [came] into playU(649-59). After the biographies, "mobility" or "versatility" became a recognisable characteristic of "Byronic" figures in fiction. Novelists influenced by Byron were usually well-versed in

Byroniana, and many fastened upon this characteristic- In his first novel, Vivian Grey(1826), Disraeli innovatively reworks the mobile Byronic-figure in female form, creating the chameleon-like Mrs. Felix Lorraine. Likely modelled after Byron's Lady Adeline, Lorraine is a clever schemer who dupes her allies and opponents and deceives even the mobile hero, Vivian Grey. When the hero finally comprehends Lorraine's chameleon-like nature, he reflects upon her similarity to himself:

1 fancy that in this mysterious foreigner, that in

this woman, 1 have met a kind of double of myself. The

same wonderful knowledge of the human mind, the same sweetness of voice, the same miraculous management which

has brought us both under the same roof. Am 1, then, an 18 intellectual Don Juan, reckless of human minds, as he was of human bodies; a spiritual libertine? . (105/6)

The young Charlotte Brontë was familias with Moore's Life, and presumably acquainted with the concept of mobility or versatility. It is not surprising, then, that we hear echoes of the biography in her early works. In a preface to The Spe11(1834), Arthur Wellesley describes Brontë's Zamorna, offering a lunatic version of Byronic "~ersatility~as described by Moore. In his warning to the fictional people of Verdopolis, Wellesley suggests that Zamorna's versatility is symptomatic of serious mental instability and satanic corruption:

Serfs of Angria! Freemen of Verdopolis! 1 tell you

that your Tyrant and your Id01 is mad. Yes! there are black veins of utter perversion of intellect born with him and ruming through his whole soul; he acts at times undes the control of impulses that he cannot resist; displays al1 the strange variableness and versatility which characterize possessed lunatics; runs head-forwards in dark by-paths sharply angular from the straight road of common sense and custom, and is in short an ungovernable f iery £001. (EEW 2:2 250) Brontë expands upon Zamorna's impetuous mobility in the later figures of Rochester and M. Paul Emanuel. Rochester is variable, capricious and moody, practising upon the wary Jane with his chameleon-like disguises. M. Paul, although less deliberately a charneleon, is described as impetuous, fiery and changeable, entirely lacking the "self-control" that the narrator, Lucy Snowe, considers desirable in a man(Vil1ette 446). Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American novelist who ultimately prompted the scanda1 about Byron's incest with his half-sister Augusta in Lady Bvron Vindicated(l870), also focused on this quality of mobility in The Minister's Wooinq(1859), a novel written a decade before her Lady Byron. Stowe's Byronic -- and fictional -- representation of Aaron Burr is of a worldly, cynical New Englander of high birth who mesmerizes females with his chmeleon-like social graces. Stowe's narrator describes Burr's mobility in terms that also echo Byron's biographers: There are some people who receive from Nature as a gift a sort of graceful facility of sympathy, by which they incline to take on, for the time being, the sentiments and opinions of those with whom they converse, as the chameleon was fabled to change its hue with every surrounding. Such are often supposed to be willfully acting a part, as exerting themselves to flatter and deceive, when in fact they are only framed so sensitive to the sphere of mental emanation which surrounds others that it would require an exertion not in some measure to harmonize with it. (189 1 Stowe, like Moore and Blessington, allows for mobility's twofold meaning. Burr may practice upon others, but like Byron's Adeline, he also sincerely sympathizes with those he manipulates. Stowe's narrator explains this paradox: He [Burr] was one of those persons who systematically managed and played upon himself and others, as a skillful musician on an instrument. Yet one secret of his

fascination was the naïveté with which, at certain moments, he would abandon himself to some little impulse of a nature originally sensitive and tender. Had the strain of feeling which now awoke in him corne over him elsewhere, he would have shut dom some spring in his mind, and excluded it in a

moment; but, talking with a beautiful creature whom he wished to please, he gave way at once to the emotion; real

tears stood in his fine eyes. . . . ( 159-60 ) Burr's susceptibility to immediate impressions reveals a refined and potentially noble sensibility. As the novel progresses, however, Stone's narrator indicates that Burr becomes increasingly corrupted, that the remaining vestiges of his "naïveté1'evaporate. Burr's mobility then becomes an extremely dangerous weapon. "Gentle and pliable as oil" the narrator describes the diabolic charmer, "he seemed to penetrate every joint of the menase by a subtile and seductive ~ympathy"(l95).~

As we shall see in Part Two of this chapter, Edward Bulwer plays with the concept of Byronic mobility in his pre-Victorian Bildunqsroman, Pelham, the Adventures of a Gentleman(1828). His mobile, gothic hero, Sir Reginald Glanville, has not yet, in Lockhart's terms, "flung offu the last remains of the "regal port." He is still a haunted and mesmerizing lord who captivates the novel's narrator, Pelham. In Chapters Two and Three, we shall also see that Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, two later Victorian novelists, emphasized their Byronic figures' fraudulence. In Lockhart's terms, they were interested in diminished heroes who were content to "work paltrier mischief." The charming James Steerforth in David Copperfield and the god- like Robert Moore in Shirley are both ultimately revealed as poseurs who delude their trusting and starry-eyed lovers.

A discussion of "Byronic figures" in nineteenth-century fiction requires some consideration of the term "Byronic." Given the present loose association of "Byronic" with dark, mysterious heroes, it is surprising to discover that the earliest usages of "Byronic" carried with them little of the present meaning. The OED1s first recorded use of the term occurs in Blackwood's in 1823, in Eyre Evans Crowe's description of Alphonse Marie Lamartine- The journalist uses the term sarcastically to refer to Byron's and Lamartine's rakish opportunism. This reference also reveals the ambiguity of "Byronicl'from the beginning:1° Alphonse La Martine, like his English prototype, was a gay young gentleman, a complete roué (on dit.) But reformed rakes now-a-days, it seems, make the best poets as well as the best husbands. Like another Childe, he visited Italy, and was resident, we believe, in some diplornatic situation at Naples, when his Byronic muse procured for him the hand of one of our fair countrywomen, with a large fortune. (Crowe 511) Although "Byronic" here refers most obviously to Byron the poet, whose muse inspires Lamartine, it also refers to Childe Harold, who travels to Italy, plays the dissipated rake, and relies on his muse for inspiration. This blurring of Harold and Byron was typical of Byron's pre-1837 reception. Byron's critics frequently understood Byron's heroes to be Byron himself. Sir Walter Scott, discussing Childe Harold, noted that "you cannot for your sou1 avoid concluding that the author as he gives an account of his own travels is also doing so in his own characterU(Letters 3:99). Thomas Babington - Macaulay summarily noted that "Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a crowd of other characters, were universally considered merely as loose incognitos of Byron himself"("Moore's" 338). Complicating matters further, critics typically oversimplified the heroes, reducing them to a single figure. Francis Jeffrey, in his review of Sardanapalus, argued that Byron's "Childe Harold, his Giaour, Conrad, Lara, Manfred, Cain, and Lucifer -- are al1 one individualH(420). And Macaulay complained that Byron's heroes al1 "are essentially the same" (Moore' s 333)". In the early decades of the Victorian period, the late

183O1s, 40's and 50ts, the "Byronicl'continued to be associated with the spurious posturing decried by Lockhart and Hazlitt. This was particularly the case in many Victorian journals. Byron's trademark collar epitomized the false affectation of the 23 "Byronic" and became a popular target for ridicule, as in J.F. Murray's 1839 attack upon a Byron imitator in Blackwood's. The privation of a neck economized to Mr Spicer

considerable sums in the article of neckcloths, -- a fancy article with gentlemen of his learned profession, but which he was enabled altogether to dispense with, wearing his shirt collar Byronically tied in front with a slip of black ribbon, which gave the countenance and chins of Mr Spicer a highly romantic and Werterian appearance. (Murray 356) George Croly, another Blackwood's author, identified the "Byronic" with premeditated effects, contrived sentimentalism and the infamous collar. ''1 disdain al1 the formalities of poetry," he wrote in 1847. "Let others prepare their parchment-bound portfolios, throw back their visages into the penseroso, fling their curls back from their brows, unbutton their shirt-collars, and, thus Byronized, begin. To - al1 times and places are the same. -- The inspiration rushes on me, and 1 pour out my 'unpremeditated song' in the original raptures of BardismW(Croly 430). E.P. Whipple, criticizing Victorian novels in 1850, associated the term with waggish posing. Describing the effect of Jane Eyre in America, he noted: The hero, Mr. Rochester . . . became a great favorite in the boarding-schools, and in the worshipful society of

governesses. That portion of Young America known as

ladies' men began to swagger and swear in the presence of the gentler sex, and to allude darkly to events in their 24 lives which excused impudence and profanity. Accordingly, while one portion of the community was clamoring for the reappearance of the principles of the Pilgrim Fathexs, another was vociferating impotent Byronics against

conventional morality. (Whipple 2 :394 ) In 1856, a Chambers author still used "Byronic" to ridicule the fraudulent sentimentalism associated with the collar. Describing a twopence public entertainment he remarked upon a "Byronic youth in a turn-dom collar" who gave a performance "so affecting that the women, some of them, can't refrain from tears"("Arnusements" 228). V.H. Hobart, writing for Fraser's in 1857, associated the Byronic collar with a theatrical rejection of conventional morality. When "Byronism was at its height," he wrote, "when shirt collars were turned dom . . . you could not be interesting unless you were miserable and vicious"(Hobart 66). In the mid-Victorian period, the 1860's and 70fs,the term "Byronic" was still associated with fraudulent posing. Trollope's narrator of The Last Chronicle of Barset(1867) used it glibly and broadly, describing how his theatrical heroine, Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, expected her illicit lover to be "Byronically wretched after his marriage on account of his love for herselfN(53S). Other writers in the 186Ogs,like W.E. McCann, emphasized the moral corruption that was often associated with Byronism in the Regency. In his 1868 essay, "Byronism," for instance, he associated the Byronic with excess and even lunacy: Mr. Moore's biography, when it came forth, . . . was 25 eagerly seized upon as a sort of authority upon the Art of Being Byronic . . . . Nobody could be Byronic, without being dissipated and a gross libertine, so the gentlemen of England plunged into the wildest excesses . . . . In 1824 and the years that followed . . . an astonishing number of perçons who became Byronic, lost their wits

entirely. (qtd. in Chew 247)" George Eliot in 1866 joined the attack on the immorality of Byronism, In Felix Holt she depicted her virtuous hero castigating Byron's heroes for their vanity and selfish egoism,

He calls them "gentlemen of unspeakable woes, who employ a hairdresser, and look seriously at themselves in the glassn(64). These Victorian usages reveal the lasting influence of the Regency association of the Byronic with fraudulence and moral corruption* They also reveal that Byron's poetry continued to be read biographically and to be oversimplified. These two tendencies had important implications. If early critics referred broadly to "Byron's heroes," and "Byronic heroes," later critics spoke of a "Byronic hero," creating a fictional idea of a hero based on Byron and his heroes. Tracing the development of the "Byronic hero" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is difficult because of the variety of interpreters and the impossibility of a single line of development, The phrase reflected changing attitudes, and, as importantly, changing critical methods. One of the first to use the phrase was John Morley, the late nineteenth-century 26 revolutionary sympathizer. Zn his biographical and idealizing discussion of Byron, he refers to the hero as a quintessential rebel. The "Byronic hero," he argues, longs for "life unconditioned." Not finding it, he fills "the world with stormy complaint"(l50). Morley's "Byronic hero" is an amalgam of Childe Harold, Conrad, Lara, Cain and Manfred, and Byron himself. He represents the "Byronic conception" of "denial, antagonism and wearinessv(129). Saintsbury followed Morley's interpretation, making more explicit the biograpbical connection between Byron and his heroes as rebels. His description embellishes the hero with other details from Byron's life. The "Byronic hero," he writes, was "a fancy portrait" of Byron "as he would like to be

thought ."13 IIe has "an ostentatious indiff erence to moral laws, for the nost part a mysterious past which inspires hirn with deep melancholy, great persona1 beauty, strength and bravery . . . [and fie] is an all-conquering lover"(Saintsbury 79). In the 1920's and 30's, the phrase "Byronic hero" was used more comrnonly by European scholars interested in presenting general overviews of English literature and tracing lineages of dominant themes and figures. Eino Railo, in The Haunted Castle(l927), generalized about the "Byronic hero" as a predominantly gothic figure, a dark, mysterious villain whose origins could be found in eighteenth-century fiction. Mario Praz, in The Romantic Ason~(1933), similarly generalized about the figure, classifying him as gothic and linking him with prototypes like Milton's Satan, Radcliffe's villains and the Marquis de 27 Sade, Praz's interpretation of the hero was primarily biographical and followed Charles Du Bos's presentation of Byron as "the authentic fatal beingV'(Du Bos 18). Eleanor Sickels, in The Gloomy Esoist(1932), also generalized about the hero. Echoing Morley and Saintsbury, she emphasized his rebelliousness and defiance of "conventional moralityn(172).

After T.S. Eliot's 1937 recornmendation in "Byron" that critics discuss the poetfs immense corpus rather than rehash his life story, some scholars reacted against the generalizing and biographical tendency of such as Praz and Railo. Jacques Barzun, in his essay on Byron in 1953, commented that the reductionism inherent in the term "Byronic" was "truly ad absurdum, for the adjective refers to the man exclusively and to a single mood onlyu(47). Gilbert Highet in 1954 similarly rejected the stereotypical Prazian and Du Bosian portrayals of the hem as a gloomy, mysterious fated man. Many others, however, continued to refer generally to the "Byronic hero," alluding to Byron's early heroes, who were still commonly identified with Byron himself. Bertrand Russell, in A History of Western Philoso~hy(1945)~ called Byron an "aristocratie rebel," and associated him generally with titanism, Satanism, Nietzsche and the "cornplex sou1 of Germanyw(752). Ernest Love11 in 1949 called guilt "the distinguishing mark of the Byronic heroU(143). Andrew Rutherford in 1961 referred ta the "passion, melancholy and misanthropy of the Byronic hero," and depreciatingly called the heroes "projections of a private quasi-adolescent fantasyU(9,46). And 28

Jane Kirchner noted in 1973 that Bomivard's was "the Byronic hero attitude; or the desperation of a man goaded beyond enduranceN(54). In her thesis, "The Byronic Hero: A Revision of Traditional Views"(1984), Mira T. Stillman notes that despite newer theoretical trends and the movement away from biographical criticism, the idea of the "Byronic hem" became all-encompassing in the 60's and 70's. While earlier critics were content to confine their discussion of the "Byronic Hero" to Byron's early works and biographical studies, later scholars regarded al1 of Byron's heroes as "Byronic heroes": Today many scholars tend to regard al1 of Byron's protagonists as "Byronic Heroes." Peter Thorslev, for example, apologizes for excluding Don Juan from his discussion of the "Byronic Hero" by citing precedent and offers, as a compromise, the narrator-persona as a "matured Byronic Hero become strangely tolerant." By excluding Don Juan from the ranks of "Byronic Heroes" Thorslev shows restraint not characteristic of others. Peter J. Manning, for instance, discusses Don Juan in a chapter entitled "The Byronic Hero as a Little Boy." (2) If discourse about the Wyronic hero" during the 60's and 70's dominated academic discussions, it had, perhaps, an even greater impact upon one or two generations of undergraduates. The Norton Antholow of Enslish Literature standardized the discourse in their educational text, transforming it into conventional dogma. 29 Norton's definition of the "Byronic hero" follows nineteenth- century traditions of oversimplifying Byron's heroes and reading them biographically. It is Prazian in its emphasis on the hero's gothicism and Morleyan in its emphasis on his defiance. It also uncritically reiterates Russell's wartime associations of Byron with Nietzsche and European titanism. As an influential codifier of the "Byronic hero," it is worth quoting at length: Byron's chief claim to be considered an arch-Romantic is that he provided his age with what Taine called its

"ruling personae; that is, the mode1 that contemporaries invest with their admiration and sympathy." This personage is the "Byronic hero." He occurs in various guises in Byron's writings, but from the first sketch in the opening canto of Childe Harold, and in the verse romances and dramas that follow, his persistent character is that of a moody, passionate, and remorse-torn but unrepentant wanderer. In his developed form, as we find it in Manfred, he is an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, imensely superior in his passions and powers to the common run of humanity, whom he regards with disdain. He harbors the torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward an inevitable doom. He is in his isolation absolutely self-

reliant, inflexibly pursuing his own ends according to his self-generated moral code against any opposition, human and

supernatural. And he exerts an attraction on other characters which is the more compelling because it involves their terror at his obliviousness to ordinary human concerns and values. This figure, infusing the archrebel in a nonpolitical form with a strong erotic interest, embodied the implicit yearnings of Byron's time, was imitated in life as well as in art, and helped shape the intellectual as well as the cultural history of the later nineteenth century. The literary descendants of the Byronic

hero include Heathcliff in Wutherina Heishts, Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the hero of Pushkin's great poem Euqene Oneqin. Bertrand Russell, in his Historv of Western Philosophv, gives a chapter to Byron -- not because he was a systematic thinker, but because "Byronism," the attitude of "Titanic cosmic self-assertion," establïshed an outlook and

a stance toward humanity and the world that entered nineteenth-century philosophy and eventually helped to form Nietzsche's concept of the Superman, the hero who stands outside the jurisdiction of the ordinary criteria of good

and evil. (2:503) Such discussions of the "Byronic hero" are, as Stillman phrases it, flintrinsicallyproblematic" for a variety of reasons(2). As she suggests, the phrase "Byronic hero" is underpimed by the assumption that the heroes are the same, or at least have enough in common to be so named. Yet Byron's fictional creations are very different from each other. Childe Harold is not the same as Conrad. Conrad is not the same as Bonnivard. Bonnivard is not the same as Sardanapalus or Don Juan. Byron's heroes, Stillman 31 suggests, are "as different from one another as any characters can be, so one must wonder what the term 'Byronic Hero' means": Logic dictates that one be able to describe a certain type of character when one speaks of a "Byronic Hero," but that is not the case. How can one speak coherently about a character encompassing such different types as the Noble Outlaw -- whose psychic energies are replenished by strife and chaos, whose prima1 instincts are destructive -- and Prometheus, the healer of humanity? Yet Conrad and Sardanapalus are both discussed as "Byronic Heroes."(2-3)

Such categorizing of Byron's heroes as "Byronic," Stillman argues, is the result of modern critics (like Victorian critics) seeing Byron's heroes as images or representations of Byron himself. The "image of Byron overshadows and obscures the real features of the heroes in question, and . . . much of the lore about the 'Byronic Hero' is really about ~yron"(4)."

Stillman also objects to such discussions because of their tendency to see the hero as a figure who develops from poem to poem. He is usually said to make his first appearance in Childe Harold, develops into the Giaour, Conrad and Lara, then finds a mature form in Manfred. Thorslev was one of the many proponents of this view, charting the hero's growth from Harold into the Promethean figure, The Norton Anthology, as quoted above, also perpetuates this view. As Stillman argues, however, "the assumption behind this hypothesis is that Byron wrote about a character who changes and expands to accommodate the poet's maturing visionV(4). How "an ascetic lover of strife (Conrad- Lara) can become a sensual pacifist (Sardanapalus) challenges our common senseH(4). It is harder still, however, to "reconcile the idea of a developing hero with the reappearance of the Conrad type, essentially unchanged, at various stages of Byron's career, and also very late in Byron's development" in Werner(4).

Stillrnan's objections are particularly pertinent to Byron scholars who must be concerned with distinguishing among different heroes. This thesis, however, deals with nineteenth- century responses to Byron and Byronism. Within this specifically nineteenth-century context, "Byronic" refers to the social phenomenon of Byronism, and it refers to a variety of conventional fictional types that inevitably became associated with Byronism. Rakes like Lovelace existed before Byron but few

nineteenth-century rakes were untouched by Byronism. Such is the case with satanic, Faustian and Promethean figures, gothic

villains, heroes of sensibility and dandies. They did not originate with Byron, but ultimately became associated with Byronism. While pointing to the problem of generalizing, then, this thesis emphasizes the all-encompassing nature of Byron's influence in the Victorian period. Novelists drew from the "PAPER BAGS" of Byronism to create a wide variety of Byronic 33 figures(Carlyle, Works 1:52). Part Two of this chapter reveals how Edward Bulwer, in his pre-Victorian Bildunssroman, Pelham, drew from these "PAPER BAGS" to create two early fictional Byronic figures: Sir Reginald Glanville and the novel's dandiacal hero, Pelham himself .15

Part 2

"The Sentimental Measles'$ : Edward Bulwer and Pelham

In the humorous opening of Yeast(1848), Charles Kingsley satirizes Byronic self-drarnatizing. His hero, Lancelot Smith, unintentionally exposes his romantic folly in his "soul- Almanac"(2): "Tuesday, 22d. -- Barorneter rapidly falling. Heavy clouds in the south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. Read Manfred, and doubted whether 1 should live long. The

laden(sic) weight of destiny seemed to crush dom my aching forehead, till the thunderstorm burst, and peace was restored to my troubled soul." (3) Although nearly two decades had passed since Bulwer complained about melancholy rooks, "Byronic" posing was still common enough to merit satire by such as Kingsley. Young Victorians continued to read their Byron, pose 3n front of mirrors and simulate 34 melancholy. They still experimented with "Byronic" identities, played Manfred, watched the barorneter, contemplated early deaths and poured melancholy reflections into confessional journals. The narrator of Yeast facetiously calls this posing "very bad." Smith's behaviour, he fears, is symptomatic of the "sentimental measles," a disease typically affecting Victorian men(3) . [Lancelot] was now in the fifth act of his "Werterean" stage; that sentimental measles, which al1 clever men must catch once in their lives, and which, generally, like the

physical measles, if taken early, settles their constitution

for good or evil; if taken late, goes far towards killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley pall on his taste and commenced devouring Bulwer and worshipping Ernest Maltravers. He had left Bulwer for old ballads and romances,

and Mr. Carlyle's reviews; was next alternately chivalry- mad; and Germany-mad; . . . and on the whole, trying to become a great man, without any vexy clear notion of what a great man ought to be. (3-4 Smith's posing is merely a stage in his Bildunqsroman journey. Like other men in search of identity and purpose, he flirts with Byron and Shelley, then turns to Byron's romantic descendants like Edward Bulwer and Thomas Carlyle, who were familiar gateposts on the by now trite journey. Part Two of this chapter is concerned with Edward Bulwer and his pre-Victorian Bildunqsroman, Pelham, The Adventures of a 35 Gentleman, which stands as an example of Byron's early reception." Like the fictional Lancelot Smith, Bulwer caught the "sentimental measles" early in life and indulged in much Childe Harold-like melancholy. He created an elaborate "Byronic" persona that was satirized by the anti-dandiacal school of Fraser's. And he promoted himself as an artist by imitating Byron, playing the Byronic chameleon who mystified his audience. Bulwer was also a prominent and influential disseminator of Byronism in the early nineteenth century." He responded to Byron and Byronism with an exhaustiveness matched only by Benj amin Disraeli.

In his unfinished autobiography, Bulwer fails to comment on his early fascination with Byron and Goethe, He describes, instead, his adolescent appreciation of the classics and his early love of Scott and Wordsworth. Given Bulwer's intended title for his autobiography, "Mernoirs of a Literary Life," this omission seems strange(V. Lytton 1:xix). Why ignore the two dominant influences in his literary development? According to his son, Bulwer composed his memoirs between 1852 and 1855, decades after his infatuation with Byron. During these years, he actively promoted classical education by lecturing at public schools. He had changed his Whig politics for Conservative, renewed his political career and appeared prominently in parliamentary 36 debates on the Crimean War, maintaining a pro-war, anti-Russian position* Given this active new Toryism, Bulwer might not have cared to dwell upon his past Byronism. Also, Bulwer was anxious to dissociate himself from other areas of his past. He revised Pelharn twice, removing from the dandiacal and Byronic novel much of its outrageousness, impudence and Regency flavour. And he was living dom the public scanda1 caused by his disastrous marriage with Rosina Wheeler, In the 18301s,however, Bulwer was still a budding young utilitarian who felt no such need for reticence. In Enqland and the Enqlish(l833), his ambitious, full-length commentary on the age, he explained how he and his generation had originally felt about Byron. He recalled eulogistically that he was like %orne early friend" with whom Bulwer associated "al1 the brightest reminiscences of y0uth"(281).~~Given the lonely and reclusive nature of his own adolescent years, this early "friendship" was bound to be persona1 and intense. Bulwer's generalizations about England's reception of the poet in Enqland and the Enqlish bear out this boyish intensity, reading Like melodramatic confessions. We had "associated the poet with ourselves," he confided. We "had felt his emotions as the refining, the exalted expression of ours, and whatever debased our likeness, debased ourselves! through his foibles our self-love was wounded. . ."(280). Describing Byron's fa11 from popularity, Bulwer used the analogy of Byron as lover and the public as his mistress. The public was deeply upset to discover that Byron was not a lofty, dark lover, 37 but a weak, capricious man. Like a wounded "mistress," it could

forgive its lover any crime, but not "weakness, insincerity, the petty caprice, the womanish passion, the vulgar pride, or even the coarse habitm(279).

Like countless young men of his generation, Bulwer's attraction to Byron coincided with his years of sexual awakening. In Enqland and the Enqlish, he admitted that Byron had the greatest impact upon him at the time of his death, when Bulwer was "exactly at that age, half man and half boy, in which the poetical sympathies are most keenW(280). The loss of Byron, then,

was little short of apocalyptic. Something Ifof the unnatural, of the impossible" was in it, he wrote, "as if a part of the mechanism of the very world stood still"(280). We "had wound and wrapt our own poetry in himself," to the degree that at Byron's

death so "much of us died with himW(280). Melodramatically, he bids farewell to his adolescent idol, writing in dramatic capital letters, "THE BEAUTIFUL IS VANISHED AND RETURNS NOTM(28T). Many years later, Bulwer still felt this attraction. In a letter of 1870, he commented dreamily on the parallel between Byron and the classical figure, Alcae~s:'~

Whenever I gaze on that beautiful portrait of Byron in a sailor's dress, standing by the seashore, 1 am reminded of the description of Alcaeus mooring his bark on the wet sand and singing of love, whatever his hardships in shipwreck and war and exile.(V. Lytton 2:475)

The older Bulwer viewed both of these beautiful youthful figures 38 as if frozen in time. "One can't fancy," he wrote, "that either of them could have lived to be sober, elderly artistsN(474-5). Bulwer's attraction to Byron was also displayed in his 1824 affair with Caroline Lamb. Lamb's foremost appeal, as he admitted in his autobiography, was her previous intimacy with the now-dead poet. This infatuation with Lamb follows the pattern of homosocial triangles outlined by Eve Sedgwick in Between Men. Lamb assumed value for Bulwer because she circulated "between men." Through her, Bulwer could vicariously attain a desired feeling of intimacy with his idol. As he confessed in his memoirs, She interested me chiefly, however, by her recollections and graphic descriptions of Byron; with whom her intimacy had lasted during the three most brilliarit years of his fife in England, and whom, when they had fiercely quarrelled, she had depicted in a wild romance, "Glenarvon," as a beautiful monster -- half-demon, and yet demigod. He never forgave it, though he ought to have been flattered, for it represented him very much as, during the zenith of his social fashion, he had wished the female part of the world to believe him. (R. Lytton 295) Lamb allowed Bulwer access to Byron's letters. She also, as Lady

Blessington did many years later, retold stories about Byron to recreate the vanished image for her eager listener. Bulwer also created a feeling of intimacy with Byron by likening Lamb to the dead poet. She reminded him of Byron, he explained, with her "strange caprices," "wild affectations," and "spoiled" but lovable and noble temperament(295). This vicarious connection with Byron through Lamb climaxed with Lamb's gift of the "Byron ring'' in 1825. She offered Bulwer a ring previously owned by Byron, claiming that she gave it only to the men she loved. After refusing the "Byron ring" because of its value, Bulwer was chagrined to discover that Lamb had bestowed the ring upon his rival, Lord Russell, immediately after he had refused it. Russell wore it openly, causing Bulwer to relinquish his ménase a trois with the dead poet, displeased at the intrusion of this unwelcome fourth party (301).

If Bulwer succumbed to the "sentimental measles, " falling in love with his poet-idol, he also, like Kingsley's Smith, responded to Byron through imitation. When still a child at

Ealing, he passed himself off to his mother's friends as a "youthful prodigy." He wrote and published the "Battle of

Waterloo" and "Ismael: An Oriental Tale", his first forays into

Byronic lyricism. As he recalled later: Then [i.e., at Ealing] did 1 conceive . . . the Homeric epic of the "Battle of Waterloo," begiming . . . with "Awake, my Muse!" and then did 1 perpetrate the poem of "Ismael:

An Oriental Tale," beginning, Byron-like, with "'Tis eve,"

&c., and thronged with bulbuls and palmtrees. In short 1 was a verse-maker, and nothing more. (R. Lytton 126)

Bulwer consoled himself for the poor sales of this volume by quoting Byron's Don Juan: "A book's a book, although there's 40 nothino in it: / 'Tis something still to see one's name in printf'(R. Lytton 126). He also experienced a tragic love affair at Ealing, his equivalent of Byron's unhappy childhood romance with Mary Chaworth. When Bulwer's young lover died, he "felt [himself] changed for life." "Henceforth," he wrote, "melancholy became an essential part of my being; henceforth 1 contracted the disposition to be alone and to broodN(R. Lytton 149).'O In 1824, Bulwer revisited the grave of his childhood love, and described the event, Byron-like, in terms of a pilgrimage. Relating the event to an Eastern experience, he explained that he yearned to visit the spot with "such devout and holy passions as may draw the Arab to the tomb of the Prophetu(242). Bulwer recorded this event in a poem entitled "The Tale of a Dreamer," which echoes Byron's Oriental Tales, His haunted narrator loses his lover, haunts her grave, and declares that now his "way of life is past into the sere / And yellow leafH(247). Like Byron, Bulwer left for the continent embittered and melancholy. At this tirne, he recorded, he was subject to "one of those visitations of great melancholy to which Che] was subject during al1 [his] younger lifeN(329). He withdrew from society in 1824, wrote a group of world-weary poems entitled Weeds and Wildflowers, then wrestled with his melancholy at Versailles(Sadleir 65). Caroline Lamb wrote to him concerning the

Byronic tone of these poems, noting that he, like she, was "too fond of Lord Byron"(R. Lytton 355). She suggested that he "turn from the modern school" and write for himself instead(355). In Paris, he became acquainted with Mrs, Cunningham, a leader of Anglo-French society who was Bulwer's version of Byron's Lady Melbourne. With her he played the part of a disillusioned Childe Harold, earning the nickname "Childe." Cunninghamfs letters to Bulwer after he left for Versailles typically opened, "My dear Childe Harold," "My dear Childet'and "Dear Childe," following with such lines of consolation as: "Your letter, just received,

relieves my mind. 1 had great doubts whether, in your Diogenes mood, you would ever think of sending to the Post officetf(372). Byron-like, Bulwer played the role of a youthful man who believes himself prematurely old, telling Mrs. Cunningham that he would "probably not marry till late in life -- supposing, what is very urilikely, that Che] ever shall be late in lifeU(371), Another letter from Knebworth 1826 exemplifies his melancholy tone:

1 like my own thoughts better than those of other

people. 1 wander about the banks of the water, or row over it in a large, clumsy boat -- sometimes 1 have been startled to hear the dock strike twelve, and have felt that al1 the servants would set me dom as a madman . . . Do you suppose my thoughts want occupation? Alas! they are never idle when the dead are around me. But 1 am not going to be gloomy. (436-7) Wîth his tragic childhood romance, his affair with Caroline Lamb, his disastrous marriage ending in separation, and his periods of living in self-imposed exile, Bulwer could complacently consider that the parallels between his own life and Byron's were 42

"tolerably completew(Escott 80). In his discussion of Bulwer, Elfenbein complicates Bulwer's imitation of Byron by suggesting its homosexual appearance in Regency society. Bulwer, he argues, like his fellow Byronist, Disraeli, knew of Byron's homosexuality. It was an "open secret" in Regency society." Performing Byronic effeminacy, then, "was a dangerous but certain way to attract attention," a form of symbolic capital that might "compensate for the lack of more conventional forms of social capital such as family connectionsN(212-213). Bulwer and Disraeli, he argues, so exaggerated their homosexual poses that they were sensational but not threatening. The "more open they were," Elfenbein argues, "the less the members of fashionable society needed to concern themselves with a secret"(216). Bulwer also imitated Byron, however, in order to promote himself as a "literary gentleman." Attempting to fulfil the public's demand for an extraordinary, charismatic celebrity, he assumed a butterfly dandy costume -- curls and extravagant clothes -- and became a genteel literary dandy. Bulwer's dandyism, importantly, was unBrummellian. Xe chose a more decadent, more aesthetic pose than the famous middle-class exile of questionable social origins. His model, like Disraeli's, was the charismatic, posing Lord who composed B~PPOand Don Juan." Bulwerts dandiacal Byronism included his revelling in exotic costumes, sometimes even -- like Byron -- sitting for portraits in them." The Bulwers also entertained extravagantly, putting on lavish parties with out-of-season food and ostentatious wines. Benjamin Disraeli, a frequent visitor at their home, described an evening in March 1832 when Bulwer appeared "more sumptuous and fantastic than ever." Rosina "was a blaze of jewels and looked like Juno, only instead of a peacock she had a dog in her lap called Fairy." Zn a show of decadence, they "ârank champagne out of a saucer of ground glass rnounted on a pedestal of cut glass"(letters 235)." Bulwer's posing as a "literary gentleman" aroused much criticism from his long-standing opponent Thackeray. From the early 1830's until the late 1840's -- two full decades -- Thackeray engaged in "Bulwer-baiting," relentlessly lampooning Bulwer's elaborately genteel title. Although, like Bulwer, he could boast a good birth, he was always testy about gentility and

Bulwer's affectations particularly annoyed hirn, In Fraser's Masazine, a Tory publication with strong middle-class sympathies, Thackeray responded to Bulwer energetically with his satirical

"Mx. Yellowplush's Ajew." His conspicuously lower-class narrator, Yellowplush, has the difficult servant's task of introducing "Mr. Bulwig" to an assembly. Unconsciously Yellowplush damns Bulwer with every word: . . . the other chap came; and when I asked him his name, said in a thick, gobbling kind of voice: "SawedwadgeorgeearI1ittnbulwig."

"Sir what?" says 1, quite agast at the name. "Sawedwad -- no, 1 mean Mistawedwad Lyttn Bulwig." 44

My neas trembled under me, my ils fild with tiers, my

voice shook, as 1 past up the venrabble name to the other footman, and saw this fust of English writers go up to the drawing-room! (Works 1: 303) More privately, in an 1852 letter to Mary Holmes, Thackeray again ridiculed Bulwer's pretentious name: "Why, 1 will ask Sir Edward George Earl Lytton Bulwer Lytton himself" to a tea-party(Letters 3:21). In 1847, he wrote to Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter: "But do not make a dinner if you please. You know how retiring are the habits, and what of al1 others is the favorite society of E. L. B. L. B. L. B L B L B L B.

(Letters, Suppl. 1:200) Bulwer's elaborate name, however, met with approval from less fastidious observers. Caroline Norton, in a letter to Mary Shelley, commented on it enthusiastically. "[wlhat a pretty name it is" she wrote(qtd. in Perkins 143)." Thackeray was quick to perceive that Bulwer's attempt to be a literary gentleman bordered on the absurd. If Bulwer's curls were a standing joke among his friends (one wonders if he were aware of the j~ke),'~so his mannerisms provided his rival with ample material for caricature. Using Yellowplush again in the cartoon "The Two Celebrated Literary Characters at Sir John's," he drew "Mr. Bulwig" dandified and in heels, prancing into an assembly. Yellowplush describes the flashy-looking Bulwig as "slim, with a hook nose, a pail fase, a small waist, a pare of falling shoulders, a tight coat, and a catarack of black satting tumbling out of his busm, and falling into a gilt velvet weskit"(l:303). In 1848, Thackeray again sketched Bulwer as a "literary gentleman," this time wearing his infamous "robe de chambre"(Letters, Suppl. 1:264). In a third cartoon of 1852,

Bulwer stands beside a piano, looking dandiacal and silly with pipe and his usual heels. Thackeray himself appears in this sketch as a glu-looking man who has the misfortune of standing beside Bulwer. "Bulwer's boots are very fine in the accompanying masterly design," he comments in the accompanying note to Mary Holmes. "Remark the traces of emotion on the cheeks of the other author (the notorious W M T)."(Letters 3:21-22). Bulwer's posing drew criticism from other sources. H.F. Chorley, in a diary entry of October 1836, targeted Bulwer's insincerity and effeminacy, recalling Leigh Hunt's attack upon

Byron's dandyism: "1 had guessed pretty much of what 1 did see -- an egotism, -- a vanity -- -al1 thrown up to the surface. Yes, he is a thoroughly satin character, but then it is the richest satin . . . "(Chorley 194). After a tête-à-tête dinner with Bulwer, he commented: "1 am not quite sure about the heart or its opposite; but it is infinitely amusing to discover what there is no escaping from, that he makes persona1 appearance his idol. . .

" (195). William Macready was also struck by Bulwer's posing, and disliked it. As Bulwer's close friend, however, he forgave him. As this diary entry of February 1836 demonstrates, he considered the affectations antithetical to the man inside: 46

Called on Bulwer, whom 1 found in very handsome chambers in the Albany, dressed, or rather déshabillé, in the most lamentable style of foppery -- a hookah in his mouth, his hair, whiskers, tuft, etc., al1 grievously cared for. I felt deep regret to see a man of such worthy and profound thought yield for a moment to pettiness so unworthy of him.

His mamer was frank, manly and cordial in the extreme -- so

contradictory of his appearance.(Journal 551'~ This defence of Bulwer insists upon his frankness and manliness, qualities that distinguished the emerging middle-class gentleman from the Regency "fine" gentleman and from Byronic affectation. After the publication of Pelham, Bulwer was frequently being confused with his hero, which likely reminded him of the public's identification of Byron with his heroes. Bulwer chose to maintain this confusion. He played the role of Pelham in society, dressing himself extravagantly and furnishing his household elaborately." Rosina provided an amusing commentary on Bulwer's playacting. Buying a "gold Toilette" with "a wreath of narcissus in dead gold" for her husband, she noted that such ornamentation "for Mr. Pelham . . . is not a bad ideaW(V. Lytton 216). On another occasion, she became frustrated with Bulwer's Pelham-like compulsion to buy pictures and statues. At "Oxmanton's sale," she commented, he "bought a bronze Apollo as large as life, two Louis

Quatorze clocks and other things which we did not wa.ntH(262). Such extravagance, she feared, would make their house "too Pelhamish by halfu(247). On still another occasion, she and Bulwer were introduced into society as their literary counterparts. "My dear," Mrs. Nash briefed her spouse, "1 have brought you the author of Pelham and his wife for you to look at," upon which we put out our paws, wagged our tongues (in default of tails) and walked to and fro in the most docile manner possible to be stared at as the first Pelham and Pelhamses who had ever been caught

alive in the country." (246) F'rasertszgalso made the comection between Bulwer and Pelham, belittling Bulwer's house and furniture, suggesting that the "living spirit of Pelham seemed to pervade the apartment," with its "carved oak table, massive, yet, with exquisite and minute decorations," its "bronze busts of the first quality," its Sèvres "wafer-bowl," "curiously wrought inkstand" and "carved paper- cutter" ( "On the Libraries" 409) .'O Like the mythical Byron of the biographies, Bulwer promoted himself as a great mystifier or magician. As Miss Cunningham recalled, he once autographed a poem for her under the pseudonym "Magus," imitating the poet whom he had once called the "GREAT MAGICIAN"(V. Lytton lA49;Enqlish 280). Another "typical piece of mystification," as Michael Sadleir calls it, occurred with Bulwer's 1840 reissue of Pelham and Mortimer. Bulwer described

Mortimer as a work performed "by a boy in years but with some experience of the worldftduring a time of severe illness in London. This was only half true, for Bulwer, as Sadleir puts it, "loved to fabricate stories about his own work, and he contrived these (often contradictory) legends" about his work(Sad1eir

48 ) ."

By the late 1820ts, Bulwer felt increasing ambivalence towards his dandiacal, melancholy childhood hero. Although Thackeray had yet to accuse him of "misantrofy, Barnet -- reglar Byronisrn"(Works 1:321), the sheer number of Byronic imitators in England made Bulwer's dramatics seem less original, even to him. As early as 1826, he expressed his weariness of Byronism. He told Mrs. Cunningham that he had been "writing a satire against gloomy people, and the Byronic mania," which begins as follows: Of young men with pale faces, and raven-black hair, Who make frowns in the glass, and write odes to despair. (R. Lytton 436-7) In Enqland and the Enqlish, he interpreted the nation's (and implicitly his own) changing attitude toward Byron as a movement from Byronism to Benthamism. Invoking the Zeitseist, he suggested that the nation simply "felt" differently after Byron's death. England made the choice between poetry and the practical; it began to identify with "statesmen and economists," instead of with "poetsU(287). Bulwer also used the mode1 of individual maturation to describe the national change. England was "in the situation of a man, who, having run a career of dreams and extravagance, begins to be prudent and saving, to calculate his conduct, and to look to his estaten(287). In this mood, Bulwer criticized his own first romantic novel, ~alkland~~.Like a Lancelot Smith recovered from his "sentimental measles," he criticized the novel's excessive sentiment. Its greatest fault, he commented, was "a sombre colouring of life and the indulgence of a vein of sentiment which, though common enough to al1 very young minds in their first bitter experience of the disappointments of the world, had certainly ceased to be new in its expression"(V. Lytton 1:186).

Writing the novel, however, had been cathartic for Bulwer. "1 had rid my bosom of the perilous stuff," he noted. "1 had confessed my sins and was absolved. 1 could return to real life and its wholesome objects" (186). Bulwer's second novel, Pelham, The Adventures of a Gentleman, was entirely different from Falkland. The novel was received as an instruction book on dandyism, and its exuberant, playful and free narrative style, like that of Disraeli's later novel, Vivian Grey, echoed Don Juan. Bulwer, however, felt that the novel was a marked departure from Byronism. He claimed that it was designed to end the "Satanic Mania" and that it helped to turn "the thoughts and ambitions of young gentlemen without neckcloths, and young clerks who were sallow, from playing the Corsair and boasting that they were villainsW(V. Lytton 1:347). Reading Pelham, one quickly becomes aware of its didacticism. Although Pelham delights in his dandyism, the older narrator treats his younger self ironically, filling the novel with 50 moralizing humour, biting satire, edifying epigraphs, and an instructive Bildunqsroman structure. He confesses his youthful foibles, and hints at his reader's ttinstruction,when only appearing to strive for [his] amusementW(445). Critics of Pelham have noted the novel's Bildunssroman structure, but have not adequately assessed the relation of the novel's Byronism to this structure. Richard Zipser, in a detailed analysis of Pelham, ignores the issue of Byronism, concentrating instead on the plot parallels between Pelham and Wilhelm Meister. He proposes that Bulwer, like Goethe, moves his hero towards self-completion by learning from able mentors and from his experiences in the world. Like Zipser, Jerome McGann makes no connection between Bulwer's Byronism and Pelham's Bildunqsroman structure. He sees the hero successfully following a "three-stage moral development," learning the self-discipline and moral principles that enable him to benefit others(1ntro. xvi). Glanville here becomes merely one of the novel's many morality figures, a negative example of the dangers of the imagination. J.W. Oakley, who is concerned with Pelham's dandyism as an "aspect of a new gentry honour," discusses the novel's Byronism as a "Calvinist supersession of guilt, false accusation, and reluctant exile in state service or right conduct of the estateW(51-2). While Elfenbein and James Campbell do consider the relationship between Byronism and the Bildunssroman, both argue that Pelham successfully outgrows his Byronism as he prepares for public office. 51 As an English Bildunssroman, Pelham was one of the first of its kind, and it follows the standard pattern of English novels modelled after Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters ~ehrjahr(1794-96).33 Pelham, at the novel's opening, typically feels alienated from his parents. His worldly father, "a rnoderate whig," who gives '~sumptuousdimers, " is no suitable mentor, and his worldly mother only fosters his worldliness(Pe1ham 3). She fills his head with romantic ideas, reading him historical romances, which she

ignorantly rnistakes for histories. As Pelham recalls:

1 think at this moment 1 see my mother before me, reclining on her sofa, and repeating to me some story about Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex; then telling me, in a

languid voice, as she sank back with the exertion, of the blessings of a literary taste, and admonishing me never to read above half an hour at a time for fear of losing my health. (61 Taught to romanticize the aristocracy and admire indolence, Pelham irnmediately idolizes the Byronic Sir Reginald Glanville whom he encounters at Eton. Pelham's "real" or Bildunqsroman education begins after his forma1 education with his Wilhelm Meister-like entrance into the city. Paris provides him with a series of object lessons about the follies and perils of vanity, ambition, and excessive romanticism. He sees his dancing tutor, Monsieur Margot, ludicrously punished for his vanity and ambition(57-62). He discovers that one of his lovers, the Byronic Duchesse de 52 Perpignan, has been seduced by sentimental vanity to preserve her beauty through cosmetics and art(l07).~' He observes the narrowness, emptiness and potential viciousness of dandyism through his encounter with Russelton, a portrait of Beau Brumme11(123-33). Pelham's most important object lesson in Paris, however, is his encounter with the altered figure of his Byronic friend. He observes Glanville gambling, consorting with a woman beneath hirn socially, and obsessed by diabolic schemes of revenge . In contrast to these negative role models, Pelham, like Marianne in Austen's Sense and Sensibility, is meant to learn the value of reason and self-discipline from a mentor. Lord Vincent, a classical philosopher with whom Pelham becomes friends, warns him against excessive romanticism. Referring to the dangers of novel reading, Vincent notes that it is "the light, the Young, the superficial, who are easily misled by error, and incapable of discerning its falla~y"(45).~~The remedy for such error is the instilling of principle and the strengthening of the mind: "Now, for instance, with regard to fiction, you must first . . . admit the disease, and then dose with warm water to expel it; you rnust . . . fortify [a child's] intellect by reason, and you may then please his fancy by fiction. Do not excite his imagination with love and glory, till you can instruct his judgment as to what love and glory are. Teach him, in short, to reflect, before you permit him full indulgence to imaqine." (46) 53 Vincent's antidote to romance -- principle, reflection and self- discipline -- is meant to force Pelham to reconsider the weakness of Glanville's overindulged imagination and to prepare him for a political philosophy that will counter his romanticism and dandyism . Pelham's second mentor, his uncle Glenmorris, helps Pelham complete bis Bildungsroman journey by enlightening him with utilitarian ideas. When Pelham returns from France, Glemorris provides him with James Mill's "Essay upon Gover%%ent," the constitutions of various countries, Bentham's most popular works, and other works on political economy(146-7). Glenmorris' object, as he tells Pelham, is to "instil principles which are hereafter to guide and i~structus"(146). After reading these instructive works, Pelham realizes that until this time he has "had no guide but passion; no rule but the impulse of the momentM(148). He closes the first volume of his narrative announcinq that after his education, he "no longer divorced the interests of other men from [his] ownU(148). Critics differ concerning the final stages of Pelham's journey. McGann suggests that by the time the hero enters the political arena in London, he needs only to test his intellectual growth(1ntro. xvi). Risking his life to rescue Glanville, he fulfils the promise of his new benevolent ideas. Campbell, by contrast, sees Pelham still learning from his final experiences in London, finding negative role models in such characters as

Jemy Gordon, Chitterling Crabtree, and Job Jonson. Then Pelham 54 "dedicates himself to advancing the general good through benevolent acts of public usefulnessw(30). He rejects "selfish opportunism and ostentatious self-display" and "finally [lays] to

rest the ghost of Byronism" (30-l) ."

Although Pelham is an older man by the end of the novel, he is not necessarily a wiser one. In fact, he lingers in the

country writing a Bildunssroman that is subsumed by another and very different story -- the tale of his romantic passion for the Byronic Glanville. Pelham romanticizes his friend by borrowing material from legendary aspects of the poet's life, and by presenting him as a Byron-figure. He introduces him as a melancholy, romantic and alienated boy at Eton. The mature narrator nostalgically recalls that Glanville's thoughts, even at this early age, were tinged "with a deep and impassioned melancholy"(6). When Glanville steps in as Pelham's protector, he gains his loyalty for life." The boys become inseparable, and while less favoured students interpret Glanville's aristocratic reserve as "coldness or pride," Pelham experiences only the openness and warmth of Glanville's love, He believes that his friend's distinguishing traits are "an utter absence of al1 selfishness, and an eager and active benevolence"(7). Pelham next presents Glanville as a Childe Harold, recently returned from his travels. He romanticizes him as a seductive 55 Byron of the boudoir, a sensual dandy who plays the role of an Eastern Prince attended by an "obsequious and bowing valetW(l83). Glanville is seductively posed, and "negligently robed in his dressing gown"(183). His apartment is fitted with mirrors and cushions, his light curtains scatter about "perfumes of the most exquisite orderM(183). Pelham responds to this idealized bero like one in a dream. He thrills to see the "merriment" of Glanville's lips, his eye "lighted up," and his "noble and glorious" couritenance shining(l84). He is overwhelmed by

Glanville's beauty. Never before has he seen "so perfect a specirnen of masculine beauty, at once physical and intellectual"(l84). Pelham embellishes his portrait by presenting Glanville also as an idealized Whig politician, an electrifying and charismatic public speaker. Glanville's reputation as a brilliant speaker precedes him to the extent that Pelham inadvertently learns of his friendrs success and is doubly affected. On the street, he happens to see a man reporting to a crowd of eager listeners that he has heard "'the most extraordinary speech, for the combination of knowledge, and imagination.'" At this, Pelham feels "agitated and feverish." Trying to ratîonalize his emotions, he contends that those "who have unexpectedly heard of the success of a man for whom great affection is blended with greater interest, can understand the restlessness of mind with which 1 wandered into the streetsU(224). Pelham also romanticizes his friend by depicting him as a 56 passionate, romantic author. He describes one of Glanvillets works as "a singular, wild tale -- of mingled passion and reflection" that "did not acquire popularity for itself, but . . . gained great reputation for the authortf(190).It "inspired every one who read it, with a vague and indescribable interest to see and know the person who had composed so singular a workU(l90). Like the capricious and anti-social Byron of legend, Glanville often disappoints his crowd of admirers: This interest he was the first to laugh at, and to disappoint. He shrunk from al1 admiration, and from al1 sympathy. At the moment when a crowd assembled round him, and every ear was bent to catch the words, which came alike from so beautiful a lip, and so strange and imaginative a mind, it was his pleasure to utter some sentiment totally different from his written opinion, and utterly destructive of the sensation he had excited.(l90) Glanville, however, generally avoids these "'trials of an author."' A deeply solitary creature who is haunted by his past and sated by present luxury, he is more to be pitied than admired, as Pelham's mentor, Vincent, suggests(190-191). Pelham also associates Glanville with chameleon-like mobility, another quality associated withe Byronisrn. At times, Glanville appears to Pelham to be merely acting many parts. He suggests as much to Pelham when he explains that his furnishing mania is a studied egregiousness. Pelham, however, also notices how impressionable Glanville is. In Paris, he assumes the low 57 characteristics of the gamblers with whom he associates, becoming so altered that Pelham decides that he "was mistakentfto have believed hirn "to be above such associates"(99). When he sees Glanville playing the Eastern dandy in his sensuous apartment, he cannot believe that this is the same man who "made his residence par choix, in a miserable hovel, exposed to . . . the damps, winds, and vapoursW(183-4). And when ?elhain sees Glanville unexpectedly on a heath, he fails to recognize him. Pelham mistakes him for the kind of man he would expect to find in such as place, a man of the "lower orders," and possibly a criminal. He therefore addresses him merely "en passant," and dismisses him as a potentially dangerous vagrant(262).

Pelham also develops his romance using another, very different genre. He composes a mini "Oriental Taleftwithin his confessions, casting his friend in the leading role as a Lara or ~iaour~'. Glanvillefs tale is strikingly similar to Larats. Like Byron's hero, Glanville has mysteriously lost a lover and is paralysed by grief, fury, and thoughts of revenge. He is suspected of a secret crime in the past that involves this lover. He encounters a serious antagonist known years earlier who has knowledge of his history, and who likely has had some crucial involvement with bis lover. A duel between himself and his antagonist is suggested but never held. He is, therefore, suspected of underhandedly murdering his antagonist in the middle of the night. The evidence weighs heavily against Glanville, but he has a devoted friend, who, like Lara's Kaled, loves him and mourns his death. Within this Lara-like plot, Pelham presents Glanville using narrative techniques borrowed £rom Lara and Byron's other Oriental tales. These techniques did not originate with Byron(they are present in Byron's gothic sources such as Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto(l764), William Beckford's

Vathek(1786), Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho(1794)). However, they became associated with Byron because of the poet's frequent use of them and his surpassing popularity. Mira Stillman sununarizes the narrative techniques used in Lara: We are treated to some "historicaP biography, to generalizations about mental attitude, but always from the outside. The ignorant third-person narrator resorts to guessing, to doubtful attempts at interpreting features . . . and asks questions about Larafs emotional state which

he does not attempt to answer. (64) Like the narrator of Lara and the narrators of The Giaour, Pelham views Glanville from the perspective of relative ignorance, provides short biographical statements about him, and speculates endlessly. As one narrator of The Giaour asks, "Who can tell who treads thy shore," and "Who thundering cornes on blackest steed?," 59 Pelham asks, " -- who could he be? Where had I seen that pale, but more than beautiful countenance before?"(Giaour 142,180; Pelham 64). Also like a troubled narrator of The Giaour, Pelham

finds himself haunted by an unidentifiable man who appears before him "like a dreamn(64). And like the narrator of Lara, who wonders "why" Lara has "cross'd the bounding main?" "whence" he

came, and "why," Pelham futilely tries to ascertain why a certain "distinquétlman, whom he thinks he recognizes, gambles in a sordid house with low companions(Lara 1:12,44; Pelham 67). As if to ensure that his readers connect his fervent questioning with

Byron's Oriental tales, Pelham quotes Lara in an epigraph immediately before recounting a midnight encounter with the disguised hero: "Tis he. -- How corne he thence -- what doth he here?"(Pelham 114).

Pelham presents Glanville, like one of Byron's heroes,

through familiar, almost iconic, poses. The most famous of these is the close-up of the lonely, silent hero, tortured by intense anger and grief. This pose relies for effect not on a detailed depiction of the hero, but upon a description of how an onlooker would feel if he or she had the courage to look upon the naked

sou1 of such a man. "He who would see, must be himself unseen" the narrator of The Corsair explains(k234). Then, -- with the hurried tread, the upward eye, The clenched hand, the pause of agony, That listens, starting, lest the step too near Approach intrusive on that mood of fear: Then -- with feelings working from the heart, With feelings loosed to strengthen -- not depart; That rise -- convulse -- contend -- that freeze, or glow,

Flush in the cheek, or damp upon the brow; Then -- Stranger! if thou canst, and tremblest not, Behold his sou1 -- the rest that soothes his lot! (Corsair 1~235-44)

When Pelham sees Glanville at the grave of a dead mistress in a private moment of passion and self-torture, he likewise describes his own apprehension. He watches the figure unseen, shrouding himself "from [his] sight by one of the yew treesn(21). Seeing

Glanville sobbing and flinging himself upon the earth "even at the place where Che] was standing," Pelham feels transfixed, his feet "half frozen"(20).'~

When Pelham sees Glanville gambling in Paris, "wrapt in his own dark and inscrutable thoughts," he again feels awe mixed with irresistible attraction. "1 could not tear myself from the spot" he writes. "1 felt chained by some mysterious and undefinable interestW(67), Pelham's reactions to Glanville are parodied by othersf. Two ladies -- after discussing The Corsair -- suddenly encounter Glanville and cannot agree whether he is "'beautiful"' or "'frightful?If' a "'mari" or a "dog"(l6). Lord Vincent similarly recounts how he was transfixed by the mysterious man and his ferocious dog and "did not recover the fright for an hour and a quartertf( 17 ) .'O Pelham identifies Glariville as Byronic with a second pose 61 that would have been familiar to readers of Byron: the disguised hero who unmasks himself, or is suddenly recognized. Byron used this stage pose in The Giaour, focusing on the narrator's astonished recognition. "'Tis he -- 'tis he -- 1 know him now,"' he cries, recognizing the "'pallid brow,"' the "'evil eye,"' the "'jet-black barb,"' despite the hero's being "'array'd in Arnaut

garbW'(610-615). Later in The Giaour, the hero is described again by an excited narrator who recognizes him when his hood falls off: "'See -- by the half-illumin'd wall / His hood fly back -- his dark hair fa11 -- / That pale brow wildly wreathing roundr"(893-5). In The Corsair also, Conrad reveals himself suddenly to Seyd, not as a harmless Dervise, but as a dangerous

enemy : Up rose that Dervise -- not in saintly garb,

But like a warrior bounding on his barb,

Dashed his high cap, and tore his robe away -- Shone his mailed breast, and flashed his sabre's ray! His close but glittering casque, and sable plume, More glittering eye, and black brow's sabler gloom, Glared on the Moslems' eyes some Afrit sprite,

Whose demon death-blow left no hope for fight. (2:144-51)

Glmwille also disguises himself as a harmless figure, then suddenly reveals himself to his enemy: "Turn," he cried, suddenly, "your cup is not yet full -- look upon me -- and remember!" 62

1 pressed forward -- the light shone full upon the countenance of the speaker -- the dark hair was gone -- my suspicions were true -- 1 discovered at one glance the bright locks and lofty brow of Reginald Glanville . . - . (119 1 This recognition scene leaves Pelham spellbound and Tyrrell stunned into unconsciousness. Pelham again identifies Glanville as Byronic with a pose from The Giaour -- that of the hero suddenly seen racing by on his horse at night. Byron's narrator again focuses on his own reactions: On -- on he hastened -- and he drew My gaze of wonder as he flew: Though like a demon of the night

He passed and vanished from my sight; His aspect and his air impressed

A troubled memory on my breast;

And long upon my startled ear

Rung his dark courser's hoofs of fear. (200-207)

Pelham likewise watches, interprets, is troubled and fascinated by the sight of a demonic rider racing by in the night. He sees a rnysterious man, in a "long horseman's cloakN who impresses him "disagreeablym(262). Later, he encounters a second cloaked figure whom he believes is the same man: 63 . . . a horseman passed me at a sharp pace; the moon was hid by dense cloud, and the night, though not wholly dark, was dim and obscured, so that 1 could only catch the outline

of the flitting figure. A thrill of fear crept over me, when

1 saw that it was enveloped in a horseman's cloak. (282) Pelham's exhilaration and fear echo the responses of Byron's narrators' when they encounter a mysterious midnight rider." Another familiar Byronic pose Pelham employs is that of the hero falling into deep trances and reveries, Lara memorably succumbs to a terrifying paroxysm of passion, shrieking and falling to the ground where he is found cold as "marbleU(Lara

1:211). Glanville sirnilarly loses hirnself for hours in trances of "gloom and despondency" that seem to Pelham like an "aberration of intellectM(l89). From these trances, Glanville would start abruptly "and renew any conversation broken off before, as if wholly unconscious of the length of his reverien(190). Conscious of the Byronic appearance of his friend's reveries, Pelham explains, perhaps too energetically, that Glanville is not an insincere imitator of Byron or Lara, but an authentic romantic hero : But the reader must bear in mind that there was nothing artificial or affected in his musings, of whatever complexion they might be. Nothing like the dramatic brown

studies, and quick starts, which young gentlemen, in love with Lara and Lord Byron, are apt to practice. There never, indeed, was a character that possessed less cant of any description.(l90) Glanville is no charlatan, Pelham insists, but an authentic Byronic figure subject to real trances.42 With the Lara plot in place, and Glanville cast as an idealized Lara, Pelham is ready to play the role of Kaled.43 Like Kaled, who lives and breathes for his master, Pelham cornes to life when he accidently encounters Glanville or inadvertently hears about him. He also, like Byron's page, fears that his idol's passions will lead him to violent action. Pelham, therefore, feels "listless and dispirited, without a single feeling to gladden the restless and feverish despair which, ever since that night had possessed men(293). As Kaled wanders away from Lara at night, to ponder his feelings, Pelham also finds hinself sleepless, lost in a "feverish confusion, that effectually banished sleepH(121). Kaled's possible willingness to become involved in and perhaps perpetrate a crime for the love of his friend are also paralleled by Pelham's decision to withhold circumstantial evidence that would lead to the conviction of Glanville. Pelham also uses the Kaled and Lara mode1 to depict intimate scenes. In Lara, the hero falls to the ground senseless, and Kaled lies over the prostrate body:

But Lara's prostrate form he bent beside,

And in that tongue which seem'd his own replied,

And Lara heeds those tones that gently seem

To soothe away the horrors of his dream. (Lara 1:241-4) 65 Bulwer recreates this scene with Pelham discovering his frantic and sobbing friend in a graveyard. Pelham calms Glanville with a lover-like sweetness like Kaled's: Glanville . . . covered his face with his hands, and sunk dom with one wild cry, which went fearfully through that still place, upon the spot from which he

had but just arisen. I knelt beside him; 1 took his

hand; 1 spoke to him in every endearing term that 1 could think of; and roused and excited as my feelings

were, by so strange and sudden a meeting, 1 felt my tears involuntarily falling over the hand which I held in my own. Glanville turned; he looked at me for one moment, as if fully to recognize me: and then throwing hirnself in my arms, wept like a child.

(Pelham 22)

As Kaled mourns over Lara's dead body, so Pelham is the only witness to Glanville's death. He holds his friend's hand, raises his limp body from the ground, and sorrowfully watches the "angel" face from which the spirit bas gone(443). Pelham's Kaled-like passion for his Byronic friend is ultimately transferred to a more socially acceptable outlet: Ellen, Glanville's sister. Only through her is Pelham allowed into the Glanville family as an accepted suitor. Yet this conventional triangular romance is presented unconvincingly. Pelham devotes little space in his narrative to Ellen, and when he does refer to her, it is usually in comection with her 66 brother. The inconsequence of Ellen appears most obviously in the last portion of the novel. After Pelham proposes to Ellen and is accepted, he immediately returns to Glanville, whose freedom is in jeopardy in England, Despite his bond with Ellen, he immediately proposes to Glanville that they go abroad together: ". . . let me accompany you abroad; 1 will go with you to whatever corner of the world you may select. We will plan together every possible method of

concealing our retreat. Upon the past 1 will never

speak to you. In your hours of solitude 1 will never disturb you by an unwelcome and ill-timed sympathy.

1 will tend upon you, watch over you, bear with you, with more than the love and tenderness of a brother. You shall see me only when you wish it. Your loneliness

shall never be invaded." (380 Glanville refuses this generous offer, reminding Pelham of his affection for Ellen and his recent proposal to her. Pelham, however, still finds a way to Save his friend. He chivalrously assumes the role of Glanville's protector, risking his life to clear his friend's name. He pretends that this dramatic rescue is accomplished for Ellen and her mother's sake, but this pretence is not convincing.

* * *

Pelham's extensive use of Byronic material supports 67 Campbell's daim that Bulwer was uniquely able to blend literary genres and conventions." It calls into question, however, his contention that Bulwer united these elements successfully with his "controlling" Bildunqsrornan design, that even the novel's sensational Byronic plot supports "Pelham's apprenticeship storyW(28,31). If this were so, then we should be completely satisfied with the novel's ending. We could confidently assume that Pelham's marriage will be happy and fulfilling, that he will accept Glanville's death and that he will return to his public career quickly. Pelhamts marital happiness, however, is questionable. He denies, overvehemently, that his new domestic life will limit his aspirations. "Marriage with me," he claims,

"is not that sepulchre of al1 human hope and energy which it often is with othersU(443). He has not, he contends, become more "partial to his arm chair." Nor has he become "more averse to shavingn(443). His prospects are not bound "to the dinner hour," nor his projects bound "to 'migrations from the blue bed to the brown1"(443). Pelham would hardly need to justify his new life if he were genuinely happy.

As Allan Conrad Christensen suggests, the prospect of Pelham returning to society is also uncertain(52). He continues to grieve over Glanville's death, and seems paralysed by this grief. He also associates his new life -- spent reading political economy -- with burial and dumbness. He is "content," he claims, "to bury fhimself] in [his] retreat," with his "mute teachers of logic and legislatureN(445). Pelham's continued grief 68

and hinted spiritual death are paralleled by the reactions of Lady Rosehill(Glanville's neglected female lover) and Glanvillets mother. After Glanville's death, Lady Rosehill exiles herself in Siena, where she lives in "utter seclusion, and very infirm healthN(445). Quoting from Childe Harold, she describes her

fate : day drags thro', though storms keep out the sun, And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on."

(445 1 Lady Glanville's reaction to the death of her son is similar.

"Poor Lady Glanville!" Pelham comments, "the mother of one so beautiful, so gifted, and so lost. What can 1 Say of her which 'you, and you, and you --- ' al1 who are parents, cannot feel, a thousand times more acutely, in those recesses of the heart too deep for words or tearsM(445). Pelhamfs last words on Glanville are deeply sorrowful, suggesting the difficulty he has had following his own moral prescription of self-discipline. He comments on his wife's loss, then his own:

There are yet many hours in which 1 find the sister of the departed in grief that even her husband cannot console; and 1 --- -1 --- my friend, my brother, have

1 forgotten thee in death? 1 lay dom the pen, 1 turn from my employment -- thy dog is at my feet, and looking at me, as if conscious of my thoughts, with an eye almost

as tearful as rny own. (445) After expressing his deep sense of loss, Pelham rather ironically asks his reader to forgive him for not presenting himself as a "blishted spirit." Unknowingly, he has presented himself in this very guise(446). Pelham's Bildunqsroman structure is also undermined by

Bulwer's consistent mirroring of Pelham and Glanville. As mentioned earlier, Bulwer himself excluded this interpretation, arguing that the heroes functioned as foils. Pelham, he claimed, was designed to provide an alternative to the Byronic Glanville. The dandy was meant to replace the Byronic hero. Even Pelham's "faibles," Bulwer contended, were more "manly and noble, than the conceit of a general detestation of mankind, or the vanity of storming our pity by lamentations over imaginary sorrows, and sombre hints at the fatal burden of inexpiable crimesU(V. Lytton 1:348). Pelham's critics have generally followed Bulwer's analysis, arguing that the novel contrasts the Byronic and the dandiacal. Robert Lytton, like Bulwer, condemns Byronic posturing and applauds Pelham's affectations:

The foppery of Pelham was the reverse of al1 this

[Le., Byronism]. It was frank, cheerful, and refined. As soon as the novel became popular the Byronic mask was dropped; and numbers who had been too honest to Wear it hastened to indulge in a fashion which, with al1 its affectations and self-assurance, aimed at least at being

pleasant, sociable, and human. (R. Lytton 495-6) E.B. Bell follows Bulwer, contrasting the "manly" Pelham with Glanville, who is "injuriously affected" by the contrast(71). McGanrits analysis also tends, rather problematically, toward the idealization of ~elham."

Bulwer and his criticst comments aside, the text of Pelham reveals that the hero and Glanville share their Byronism, dandyism and much more. Glanville is aç much Pelham's double as he is his foil, which makes Pelham's Bildunssroman journey even more problematic, Glanville admits, with a "faint smile," his similarity to his dandy friend, and adds that "we are all, in the words of the true old proverb,' children of a larger growth.' Our first toy is love -- our second, display, according as our ambition prompts us to exert it. Some place it in horses -- some in honours, some in feasts, and some -- voici un exemple -- in furniture." (184) With his dandiacal promotion of the trivial over the significant, with his concern for display rather than substance, Glanville signals to Pelham that he too is obsessed with self-presentation. Glanville's fantastical furnishings also help him attain fame.

"'See what it is to furnish a house differently from other people,"' he explains, "'one becomes a bel esprit, and a Maecaenas, immediately. Believe me, if you are rich enough to afford it, that there is no passport to fame like eccentricity'"(184). Pelham, however, fails to see that Glanville's furniture dandyism is a self-serving pose; he presumes that he alone is a calculating poseur. Pelham also shares Glanville's Byronism, which suggests that 71

Byronism is an integral part of his identity, not a phase that he wlll outgrow. He is well-born, has a sneering contempt for his fellow Englishmen, is extremely handsome, and wears his hair in long, beautiful ringlets. He dislikes cant, He becomes an author- He turns Whig politician and succeeds in winning a seat in parliament. He also suffers from a tragic love (the loss of Glanville) and expresses a Childe Harold-like world-weariness, shrinking "by rapid degrees, into a very small orbit, £rom which

Che] rarely movedW(l88). And like Glanville, he rises "by candle- light" to consume the hours "in the intensest application," while others he knows waste their nights sleeping(234). Pelham is also a chameleon like Glanville. His exceptional dramatic talents allow him to conquer the hearts of women and win mens' esteem. This mobility, however, also has a negative impact on him. He is associated with mirrors that suggest his vulnerability to his environment and his essential lack of self.'l He has encountered looking-glasses, for instance, that "distort [his] features like a paralytic strokeW(27). Some mirrors even make him literally assume the colours of his environment: Between the two windows -- (unfavourable position!) was an oblong mirror, to which I immediately hastened, and had the pleasure of seeing my complexion catch the colour =f the curtains that overhung the glass on each side, and exhibit the pleasing ruralitv of a pale green. (153) Pelham identifies himself quite literally with his image and is 72 therefore distressed on these occasions. His response is superficial, however: he collects objects, like his "Bohemian glasses," that throw "a lovely flush upon the complexion''( 181 ) .47 Logic dictates that by the end of the Bildunssroman, Pelham would abandon his role playing and become less susceptible to impressions. Yet he does no such thing. In the novel's final scenes, he undertakes a challenging new role as amateur detective. Pelham eagerly assumes this part when Glanville declares himself innocent of murdering his antagonist. He quickly identifies the true murderers, takes up their scent, tracks a former underworld acquaintance, Job Jonson, and bribes him with a life annuity. Jonson, then, not Glenmorris, becomes Pelham's unlikely last mentor, helping hirn to master the subtle arts of detection and role-playing. Jonson is a fascinating contrast with the utilitarian Glenmorris. The novel's supreme poseur, he dresses in "the most ostentatious attire that ever flaunted at Margate, or blazed in the Palais Royal"(390). His costume surpasses even Pelham's and Glanville's in its egregiou~ness~And he outmanoeuvres Pelham and Glanville in the art of deception, picking both their pockets without detection. Jonson aids Pelham's transformation from Byronic dandy to detective by initiating him in "Flash," a slang code used by a group of genteel criminals. With Jonson's help, Pelham becomes "one of the boys" quickly. He deceives "Brimstone Bess," who allows him into the gang's hideout and dupes other 73 gang members who wish to install him with them officially(420). Pelham is such an adept learner of "Flashttthat Jonson offers to "engage him" in three months as "complete a ruffler as ever nailed a swell"(410). Pelham's detective work is facilitated by his adoption of yet another role. To extract a confession from Dawson, he must pass himself off as a clergyman. Jonson accordingly dresses him in clerical robes, covers his face with powders, lotions and paints, cuts his lllwruriantlocks" and fixes a wig upon his head.

Despite PeLhmts initial sense of the incongruity of a dandy wearing religious garb, Jonson affirms that the costume fits him "to a hairU(408). He turns Pelham round "as if [he] were his eldest son, breeched for the first timeW(408). Looking at himself in a full length mirror, Pelham sees that he has been entirely transformed:

Had 1 gazed at the reflection for ever, 1 should not

have recognized either my form or visage. 1 thought my sou1 had undergone a real transmigration, and not carried to its new body a particle of the original one. What

appeared the most singular was, that 1 did not seem even to myself at al1 a ridiculous or outré figure; so admirable had the ski11 of Mr. Jonson been employed.(409)

Pelham's disguise is so effective that it does more than dupe Dawson. It also convinces Pelham himself, who seems to lose himself in his disguise. These final scenes contradict a traditional Bildunssroman 74 reading of the novel. Pelham hardly improves in a conventional sense. Yet his final transformation into an amateur detective need not be read as a moral and spiritual decline. Instead, we can see Pelham "transforming" his Byronic qualities so that he can play a new, absorbing role as detective. Within a wider fictional context, Pelham's assumption of this role is suggestive, It connects him with later mutable detectives, most directly and obviously with Robert Audley, Braddon's detective hero in Lady Audley's Secret(1862). Pelham was a favourite novel of Braddon's, and an obvious source for her detective hero." Braddon dedicated her novel to Bulwer, and created a detective hero remarkably like Pelham. Audley has continental airs. He alternates between indolence and intense spells of hard work. He assumes a pose of dandiacal nonchalance. He is also associated with Byronism. Strolling indolently through Temple Gardens, exhausted after "reading French novels," he relaxes with his "shirt collar turned dom and blue handkerchief tied loosely about his neckn(32). Audley denies this association, however. He tells Lady Audley that he 'lis troubled with none of the epidemics whose outward signs are turn-dom collars and Byronic neckties"(l31), Most interesting is Braddon's association of her detective with a pipe. Audley likes to sit in his "favourite arm- chair" smoking a "pale Turkish tobacco" while bis thoughts wander

"away upon the blue clouds of hazy tobacco smokeu(390). Perhaps this dreamy, magician-like figure was inspired by Braddon's idealized picture of Bulwer himself, who was infamous for smoking his hookah. Other detective figures, like Poe's "~upin"'' and Doyle's "Sherlock Rolmes" (the second of whom, likewise, smokes a dream- inspiring chernical) also have much in common with Pelham. They are artistic, assume mysterious poses, are alternately indolent and obsessively hard-working, They are also, like Pelham, unorthodox and adaptable, and they assume a pseudo-religious authority as they enforce secular morality. Such similarities suggest an intriguing connection between Byronism, dandyism and the detective genre, a connection that Pasquale Accardo has noticed. Sherlock Holmes' obligatory outlandish dress, as he suggests, particularly after William Gillettets stage performances, accented "certain Byronic strains in Holmes's character and served to link the antisocial scientific detective to the antisocial artist and aesthete -- the dandyn(88). If Byronism was once a means of expressing rebellion against moral hypocrisy, it becomes, within the detective genre, a means of enf orcing morality . Endnotes

l Writing in 1905, Leonard comments: "Byronic lyrics were naturally a most prevalent form of Byronism. There are those still living who cari recall the time when it was almost as fashionable and fitting for refined ladies and gentlemen to dash off a Byronic stanza or two, as it was '[i]n gallant days of ruffed Elizabeth' to write sonnets, or in prim Queen Anne's to turn an epigram" ( Leonard 75 ) The term "portable library" dates back at least as far as the 19501s, with "The Viking Portable Library" series. It was used by Reuben Brower in Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (1959) and also by John Hollander in The Fiqure of Echo. In Patsy Stoneman's Brontë Transformations(1996), the term "transformations" is used to discuss adaptations of Jane Eyre and Wutherinq Heiqhts.

' Jauss emphasizes the need for a synchronie as well as a diachronie perspective. He argues that the latter was the "only one practiced" in linguistics and literary history(36). Hollander uses this term to describe satirical echoing. To de-mythologize is to reduce, simplify or pare dom that which is heavily mythologized. The term has much in common with the term de-grotesque, which is defined in the next chapter(31). Andrew Elfenbein suggests that St Clair overstates his case. The lower classes, he argues, had access to Byron's earlier poems through pirated editio~s,and certain lower class poets such as Thomas Cooper, William Hay Leith Tester and others were influenced by him. Similarly, the cheapness of Don Juan and its political radicalism attracted certain members of the upper- class who relished the poem's political and sexual transgressiveness(86/87). Stuart Peterfreund, in "The Politîcs of Neutra1 Space" in Byron's Vision of Judqement", argues that Byron writes himself into this poem as Satan in response to Southey's remarks about Satanic poetry in his own Vision of Judqement(277). Hunt's negative characterization of mobility should be understood within the context of the seventeenth and eighteenth- century dialectic of fixity and mutability. Fixity was the mark of moral perfection. It was identified as such at least as early as Plato's Ion. Milton's God in Paradise Lost, we also'recall, is "Omnipotent, / Immutable, Immortal"(Milton 3~372-3). Similarly, Richardson's virtuous Sir Charles Grandison is a "Man acting Uniformly well," whose "Actions are regulated by one steady PrincipleH(4). In contrast, Byron's mutability would have signalled satanic corruption and the variableness of a capricious Lovelace- Darwin's The Orisin of S~ecies(1859)introduced a more positive philosophical attitude, characterizing tne adaptability of species as a positive means of survival. Many Victorians, however, continued to view human mutability negatively. Arnold contrasted nature's fickleness with human will and idealized "man's one nature" which "queen-like, sits alone, / Centred in a majestic unityt'("Written in Butler's Sermons"(7-8). See also "In Harmony with Naturen(1849)- George Eliot in Middlemarch similarly articulated the need for a centre of self. Stowe's portrayal of Burr also strongly echoes Macaulay's description of Byron in his review of Moore's biography. Compare the comments voiced by one of Stowe's characters about Burr to Macaulay's famous comments on Byron: "...how unjust is the world! how unjust both in praise and in blame! Poor Burr was the petted child of society; yesterday she doted on him, flattered him, smiled on his faults, and led him to do wbat he would without reproof; today she flouts and scorns and scoffs him, and refuses to see the good in him" (The Minister's Wooinq 416) Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its indignation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshipped with an irrational idolatry- He was persecuted with and irrational fury. ("Moore's" 308)

'O Related terms originating in the 1820's tend also towards ambiguity. In 1817, William Sidney Walker calls Byron's Manfred "the perfection of Byronism," referring ambiguously to certain characteristics of Byron or his poetry(qtd. in OED). The OED's source is Col. John Moultire's The Poetical Remains of William Sidney Walker . . with a Memoir of the Author, 38. In 1818, a journalist for The Literary Gazette condemns the "prose Byroniads which infest the times," referring unclearly to "semi-sentimental semi-supernatural" epics of Byronian heroesN(Rev. of Ernestus 546)- And in 1823, J. Gillon ridicules "Byronized Cockneysn in Blackwood's alluding to the imitators of Byron and his heroes1'(267). 11 The centrality of Byron's image in his reception partly explains why the "Byronic" referred both to Byron and his heroes. As Mary Elizabeth Braddon flippantly asks the reader of Aurora Floyd in the 18601s,"If Lord Byron had never turned down his collars, would his poetry have been as popular as it was?"(221), There is rnuch evidence to suggest the centrality of Byron's appearance to his reception. Contemporary newspapers in Europe and England "bear witness that Byron's portrait was as familiar as Napoleon's and could be seen in al1 the sh~: windows"(qtd. in Leonard 3)- Portraits of Byron were readily available, and a painting of Byron even found its way into the Great Exhibition(Huntingt0n 241-2). Editions of Byron's poems inevitably included compelling portraits of Byron as their frontispieces, causing Byron's image to preface, even overshadow his poetry. The biographies, likewise, frequently included portraits of Byron and his circle and contemporary magazines frequently reproduced caricatures of Byron. The poet's ubiquitous image seemedpto invite widespread imitation. A "large class of young persons," Macaulay in 1831 recalls, "bought pictures of him . . . and did their best to write like him, and to look like hirn." Many of them even "practised at the glass, in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the-scowlof the brow, which appear in his portraitsl'("MooreW 341). In The Beaten Track, Buzard describes how the English even imitated their hero when they travelled, following Harold's path with surprising literalness, stopping at places like the Bridge of Sighs and assuming melancholy Byronic poses(114-130). For some would-be poets, Byronic poses were irresistible. "We have known more than one fool," The Western Monthly Review commented, ''fancy himself a genius and to create the same illusion in others, quarrel with his wife and part from her to become more like Lord Byront'(qtd. in Leonard 77n). J.L. Martin, imitating Byron's Bards, ridiculed Byronic imitation, chastising those "Yankee Byrons" and "mimic Harolds," "merchant Corsairs" and "legal Laras" who affect long hais, and Wear a cloak of "gloomy fold," "aspiring to attain / The lordly poet's dark Promethean straintr(qtd.in Leonard 69). One of these Yankee Byrons, according to Leonard, even frontispieced his works with his own portrait, "having side pose, collar and locks almost identical with Byron's, and Save for the somewhat more angular features, Che was] hardly to be distinguished" from the poet(77). Imitation of Byron's poses became so popular that Edward Bulwer wrote a poem in 1831 belittling Byronic "rooks" or imitators: On the Imitators of Byron A Fable A SWAN hymn'd music on the Muses' waves, And Song's sweet daughters wept within their caves; It chanced the Bird had something then deemed new, Not in the music only -- but the hue -- Black were his plumes; -- the Rooks that heard on high, Came envying round, and darkened al1 the sky; Each Rook, ambitious of a like applause, Clapped his grave wings -- and Pierus rung with caws. What of the Swan's attraction could they lack, Their noise as mournful, and their wings as black? In vain we cry -- the secret you mistook, And grief is d--d discordant in a Rook! (The Siamese Twins 377) As Bulwer's poem suggests, the swan's fascination derived as much from its mournful poses as from its original music. 12 Chew's source is an essay by W.E- McCann, originally published in The Galaxy Miscellany, June 1868, 777f- 13 Norman Mailer makes a similar suggestion about Marilyn Monroe. Zolotow's biography, Marilm Monroe, he argues was "a prodigiously factoidal enterprise." It consisted of fables (factoids rather than iacts) that "Marilyn had been polishing" for yearsH(18).

l4 The French critic, H.A. Taine, exemplifies the nineteenth-century conflation of Byron and his heroes that had such an impact on twentieth-century scholarship. In 1872 he writes: ". . . none but blind men could fail to see in him [Byron] the sentiments of his characters. This is so true, that he has not created more than one. Childe Harold, Lara, the Giaour, the Corsair, Manfred, Sardanapalus, Cain, Tasso, Dante, and the rest, are always the same -- one man represented under various costumes, in several lands, with different expressions; but just as painters do, when, by change of garments, decorations, and attitudes, they draw fifty portraits from the same model. He meditated too much upon himself to be enamoured of anything elseM(Taine 279).

l5 Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Doctor's Wife(1864) offers a neat example of how such Byronic figures were constructed in the nineteenth century. Her fictional sensation novelist, Sigismund Smith, fails to fulfil his audience's expectations of him as an ideal Byronic hero: Was this meek young man the Byronic hero they had pictured? Was this the author of "Colonel Montefiasco, or the Brand upon the Shoulder-blade?" They had imagined a splendid creature, half magician, half brigand, with a pale face and fierce black eyes, a tumbled mass of raven hair, a bare white throat, a long black velvet dressing- gown, and thin tapering hands, with queer agate and onyx rings encircling the flexible fingers. (12) Braddon's description of this idealized novelist(not the actual Smith) shows how Victorians created Byronic figures. Sigismund is an amalgam of many different "Byronic" sources. Like the legendary Byron of the biographies, he is a creator of gothic villains; he is associated with magic and dandyism, and he wears a luxurious dressing gown. Sigismund's bejewelled, tapering fingers also recall Moore's and Hunt's biographies, which describe Byron's hands in detail. Braddon's idealized hero is also drawn from Byron's creations. He is "half brigand," like Conrad, has a pale face, a "mass of raven hair" and "fierce black eyes. " l6 Edward Bulwer Lytton will be referred to as Edward Bulwer rather than Bulwer Lytton because he was known by the former name during his early years as an author. Bulwer was almost absurdly insistent upon his genteel name. Christened Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, he appended his mother's name to his surname in 1843 after inheriting her estate. In 1866, as E.B.E.L. Bulwer- Lytton, he accepted a baronetcy and became E.G.E.L.B.L., first Lord Lytton.

" Bulwer's novels were read by many Victorian novelists. The Brontës, Dickens, Thackeray, Braddon, Barrett Browning, Martineau and Eliot, were al1 familiar with his work, as were Americans like Poe, Melville and Beecher Stowe. These "readers" of Bulwer's Byronism eventually became interpreters of the "Byronic" in their own fiction.

la Bulwer quotes Coleridge's Wallenstein to suggest how closely Byron was associated with his generation: He stood beside us, like our youth Transform'd for us the real to a dream, Clothing the palpable and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dam. (Encrland 279)

l9 Alcaeus was a Greek lyric poet who composed poetry that denounced tyranny, lamented persona1 misfortunes, and celebrated love and wine. He also became a leader against the tyrants Myrsilus and Pittacus and was banished from Lesbos.

'O Thackeray interpreted Bulwer's melancholy later as whiny and self-important. In an 1841 letter to Edward Fitzgerald, he writes: "Ah Yellowplush! where are the days when you lived & laughed. If 1 don't mind 1 shall be setting up for an unacknowledged genius, & turn as morbid as BulwerW(Letters 1:39).

" Elfenbein uses D.A. Miller's term, the "open secret" to explain the response to Byron's sexuality. An "open secret," Elfenbein summarizes, "is scandalous information that most in a particular group know, but none discusses. The aristocrats in Regency society reinforced their class solidarity by tolerating behavior that flouted noms associated with Victorian 'bourgeois morality' as set out in the work of writers such as Hannah More . . . . '' Elfenbein explains the effect of performing Byronic effeminacy in the context of this "open secret": "Imitating Byron in fashionable society carried a special charge because of its possession of Byron's open secret- Byronic modes of behavior carried a faint aura of scandal: a man misht be a sodomite, as Byron supposedly had been, but one could never be sure. An upper- class imitator of Byron could leave his peers guessing just how far his imitation extended1'(212). '* The legend of Beau Brummell's plebeian birth was false. Brummell's father was a respected middle-class civil servant, and his mother came from a family that boasted several generations of gentility. The view of Byron as a dandy contradicts a typical critical contrasting of Byronism and dandyism. Moers, however, sees Byron offering his own version of dandyism at the top of society, which such as Disraeli imitated(89).

2 3 Bulwer's Byronic imitation expressed itself also in his obsession with image and self-presentation. At one costume party in 1842 he gloried over the effects of an extravagant theatrical costume he borrowed from Macready. Thanking Macready, he relates how his costume was such a great success: "It would be ungrateful not to inform you of the success of your Costume. It went off with great éclat, 1 flatter myself that the accessories tended to heighten the effect. In especial 1 made a great feature of the sword, for judging the handle too rugged for the dress, 1 availed myself of a picture of the time to veil it in sword knots & drapery of Gold Lace round which was wreathed a chain of large Emeralds" (Shattuck 208). Like a Byron posing in Oriental costume, Bulwer even sat for a portrait in this flamboyant outfit, and asked Macready if he might retain the costume for a rimer of days(208).

2 4 Fifty years later, Disraeli represented this flamboyant dinner with the Bulwers in Endymion, in which Bulwer is represented as "Hon. Bertie Tremaine," dandy and Benthamite(lS7- 162). These decadent dinners contrast sharply with Bulwer's later attitude towards ostentation. His worldly and pragmatic Lunley Ferrars in Ernest Maltravers considers such rneals politically ineffective: "Ferrars gave a great many dinners, but he did not go on that foolish plan which has been laid dom by persons who pretend to know life, as a means of popularity -- he did not profess to give dinners better than other people. He knew that, unless you are a very rich or a very great man, no folly is equal to that of thinking that you soften the hearts of your friends by soups à la bisque, and Vermuth wine at a guinea a bottle1'(2:71). 1 have not been able to discover the meaning of Disraeli's reference to "ground glass".

2 5 Perkins does not include a source for Caroline Norton's 1838 letter to Mary Shelley. However, Norton's Letters &c. Dated from June 1836, to July 1841 can be found at the British Library. A second collection is Bertha Coolidge's Some Unrecorded Letters of Caroline Norton, In the Altschul Collection of the Yale University Library, Boston, 1834.

2 6 Miss. Cunningham writes of Bulwer's curls: "He was rat the time of Pelham] particularly sensitive to the praise or blame of the world. He adopted a style of dress and marner different to that of other people; and he liked to be noted for it. My mother often laughed at him for this vanity, and his 'beautiful curls' were a standing joke amongst his friendsW(V. Lytton 1:148).

27 In his diary entry for March 2, 1836, Macready describes a second visit with Bulwer, when he is surprised to find him undandified. Even in this unprepared state, Bulwer seems to be striking a pose: "[Il evidently came on hirn by surprise; he could not well avoid seeing me; indeed he did not demur, though evidently a little discomposed. He was in complete déshabillé -- a white nightcap on his head, looking like a head of Gay or some poet of that time -- it was a picture; his busts, papers, etc,, around him, and the unornamented man of genius undandifiedU(Journal 57).

2 8 Curiously, Pelham did not share Byron's taste for unusual household animals. Other novelists did attribute this unusual taste to their Byronic figures. Sir Guy Morville in Yongefs The Heir of Redclyffe owns a great variety of pets including a sea- gull, hedge-hog, a toad, a raven, a squirrel, a horse, two hawks and many dogs(12,35). Female Byronic figures (like Aurora Floyd and Shirley) keep large rough mutts and horses.

2 9 Thackeray comically treats Bulwer's reaction to Fraser's

ridicule in "Mr Yellowplush's Ajew" with "Bullwig"- pretending- not to be acquainted with the magazine: "'FWASWER!' says ~ullwi~;'O -- ah -- hum -- haw -- yes -- no -- why, -- that is weally -- no t weally, upon my weputation, 1 never have heard the name of the pewiodical. By the by, Sir John, what wemarkable good clawet this is; is it Lawose or Laff -- 7if', Bulwer's conversants, of course don't accept this pretence. Lardner comments: '"Nat read Fraser! Don't believe him, my lord duke; he reads every word of it, the rogue! The boys about that magazine baste him as if he was a sack of oatmale . . Bullwig has every syllable of it be heart"' (1:307-8).

'O After playing the part of Pelham and his other characters, Bulwer would deny the similarities between them. In the dedicatory epistle to Paul Clifford he writes: "The year before Pelham appeared, 1 published 'Falkland,' in which the hero was essentially of the gloomy, romantic, cloud-like order; in short, Sir Reginald Glanville out Glanvilled. The matter-of-fact gentry, who Say 'Werland cal1 thernselves Critics, declared that 'Falkland' was evidently a personation of the author: next year out came "Pelham," -- the moral antipodes of fFalkland,f-- and the same gentry said exactly the same thing of 'Pelham'. Will they condescend to reconcile this contradiction? . . . I have never even drawn two heroes alike, but made each, Falkland, Pelham, Mordaunt, and Devereux, essentially differentN(Paul Clifford xiiin-xivn). '' With his anonymous publication of Godolphin, Bulwer again worked to construct an alternate authorial self. In his first preface, he tempted his readers to speculate about his identity. In his 1833 preface to the second anonymous edition, he responded to speculations he himself had advanced in The New Monthlv. Bulwer's elaborate self-presentation extended also to his extraordinarily mannered prose, which Sadleir calls "Bulwerese"(210). Thackeray noted Bulwer's tendency to Bulwerese, and made fun of it in Punch's Prize Novelists, later called Novels by Eminent Hands. Planning the sketch in 1847, he comments: "He will quote Plato speak in Big Phrases, and let out his Nunkys oldW(Letters 2~270).In "Epistles to the Literati," Charles Yellowplush takes up this theme, giving the following advice to Bullwig: "You may . . . call a coronet a coronal (an 'ancestral coronal', . . ) if you like, as you might call a hat a 'swart sombrero,' 'a glossy four-and-nine,' 'a silken helm, to storm impermeable, and lightsome as the breezy gossamer'; but in the long run, it's as well to call it a hatW(Letters 1:326). '' Falkland(1827) was drawn largely from Goethe's The Sorrows of Younq Werther and Byronic material. It featured a melancholy, world-weary hero who retreats to the country, falls in love with a married woman and becomes responsible for her death. The hero is satiated and altogether a spiritual ruin. He exiles himself, and dies in Spain fighting for political liberalism -- in his case -- the Spanish Constitutionalists. '' Goethe's work was translated into English by Carlyle as William Meister's Apprenticeship(1823). Susan Howe, who examines various early English Bildunqsroman, describes them as novels "of all-round development or self-culture" that presupposed "the more or less conscious attempt on the part of the hero to integrate his powers, to cultivate himself by his experienceU(6). Jerome Buckley defines the principal characteristics of the genre more specifically. The hero is often fatherless, or alienated from his father and his father's values, and seeks a substitute father/mentor and creed(l9). His "real" education occurs with his journey from home, his fleeing of provinciality for the liberation and corruption of the city(20). Typically, the hero becomes romantically involved with two different women "one debasing, one exalting" and then "after painful soul-searching," accommodates himself with maturity to the modern world, often revisiting his old home, to "demonstrate by his presence the degree of his success or the wisdom of his choiceU(l7-18).

" Christensen has suggested that the Duchess of Perpignan is Byronic with her ludicrous "efforts to mode1 her behaviour upon episodes in the Turkish Talesn(44). According to Christensen, she depends on "attractive appearances and romantic poses," attempting to draw Pelham into her melodramatics by trying to "poison his coffee, to stab him with a paper cutter, and to embroil him fatally in a duelW(44). Perpignan's Byronism extends to her resemblance to Catherine in Don Juan, and to the ever-creative Caroline Lamb. '' See also Catherine Moreland in Austen's Northanqer Abbey, who might also be classified as a "light" "young" and "superficial" novel reader. " That Pelham has truly outgrown Byronism is demonstrated, we are to assume, by his moralizing strictures. After reading Glanville's melancholy poetry, he lectures his friend about indulging his despondency: "'Your verses/" said 1, "'are beautiful . . . . But 1 love not their philosophy. In al1 sentiments that are impregnated with melancholy, and instil sadness as a moral, 1 question the wisdom, and dispute the truth. There is no situation in life which we cannot sweeten, or embitter, at will.'" Glanville is not convinced by Pelham's new doctrine. Gloomily, he notes that for him the motto "'never to regret,' is as idle as Horace's 'never to admire'"(223). A scene in Jane Eyre echoes this scene. Jane commonsensically advises Rochester: "'It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve"'(l69). He responds like Glanville: "'Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and at this moment, I am paving hell with energy1"(169).

3 7 A similar scene is developed more fully in Disraeli's Coninssby. The young Byron-figure, Coningsby, rescues another boy and gains his loyalty, Within the novel's political allegory, Coningsby symbolically gains the trust of the manufacturing middle class, whom the other boy represents. Dickens echoes this scene in David Copperfield with the Byronic Steerforth gaining David's loyalty by rescuing him at school.

" Elizabeth Mary Braddon, in her 1873 discussion of Bulwer's novels in The Belqravia, identified Glanville as a "rococo" figure and as a Giaour: "Sir Reginald Glanville, when first he appears before us, with his dog, his cloak, and his tendency to fling himself upon the ground and weep floods of tears, has, perhaps, something of a rococo air; but this impression vanishes at once when we see him in action . . . . Modelled upon, or at any rate recalling, Byron's Giaour, it stands unmatched in modern prose composition"("Lord Lytton" 77- 78).

3 9 Jane Eyre uses this pose several times to identify Rochester as Byronic: "Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire -- impatience, disgust, detestation -- seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrown(175).

'O Bulwer was among the first to contrive a double for his Byronic figure in a ferocious dog. Wutherinq Heicrhts, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Aurora Floyd and The Heir of Redclyffe followed this pattern. 4 1 Brontë also employs this famous pose, with Rochester first appearing to Jane on horseback at twilight. Her Byron- figure, however, comically falls from his horse and needs Janels help to re-mount. Jane again encounters Rochester on horseback later in the novel: "1 set out; 1 walked fast, but not far: ere 1 had measured a quarter of a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop, a dog ran by his side, Away with evil presentiment! It was he: here he was, mounted on Mesrour, followed by PilotW(350-51).

4 2 Rochester also suffers from trances or paroxysms. Reflecting upon the evening spent with him, Jane thinks: "there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of motion which had suddenly seized him, when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood"(l80),

43 Pelham's adoption of the female role of Kaled is suggestive in relation to the novel's homoerotic subtext.

44 In Falkland, Campbell suggests, Bulwer united autobiographical material with "the cult of Byron, adding liberal portions of romanticism and gothicism -- elements taken from Wordsworth, Scott, Rousseau, Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, Godwin and MaturinW(26). In Pelham, he similarly combines many diverse elements, as we have seen. Campbell offers a summary of these many elements: "silver-fork satire; political novel; Pierce Egan- like tour of turf and London low-life; sensational story of Byronic seduction, rape, revenge, and guilty remorse; detective quest; and story of separated loversn(28). 4 5 McGann views Pelham as "a man of generous partstfwhose history conducts "him through a multitude of scenes entirely worthy of himU(Intro. xx). For hirn, Pelham is not only "the book's chief symbol of the central theme of unlimited vitality," but also a man whom nothing "coarse or ignoble can touch" because of his "rnost acute perception and complete self- discipline(xx,xxiv), 46~hisdiscussion of Pelham's mobility is indebted to Christensen's discussion of Bulwer's handling of mirrors in Pelham.

4 7 Pelham sometimes senses his susceptibility to contaminating influences, In Paris, he is affected by the coarse manners of the English "débauchésw(104). When he canvasses for the borough of MBuyemall,p he again is influenced by his environment. Eager to win the çeat, he falls into the corrupt electioneering practices common to English politicians. Chmeleon-like, he appears a thorough Tory with Tory voters and an ardent Whig with Whig voters. 4 a In her tribute to Bulwer, Braddon discusses Pelham at length and quotes extensively from the novel. It was "[slurely the most wonderful book ever written at three-and-twenty" she wrote(75). "The book overflows with good things. Every other page sparkles with an epigramu(75). Braddon liked Pelham so much that she felt that it should be a "textbook8'for "a young man entering the world"(76).

4 9 Michael Allen in Poe and the British Masazine Tradition discusses Byron and Bulwer's influence on Poe, particularly Poe's theatrical presentation of himself as a "literary personality." Chapter Two

"An Aching Beart":

Charles Dickens and Co~~erfield

1 admired and loved him, and his approval was return enough. It was so precious to me that 1 look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart. (David Copperfield 93)

&his chapter opens with a discussion of T.B. Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, Victorian male authors who turned away from Byron and Byroism in the 1830's. Their reactions provide a context for the chapter's discussion of Charles Dickens and David Copperfield. T.B. Macaulay's early minor pieces show one Victorian's changing attitudes from the 1820's to the early 1830's- Carlyle's reviews serve as cornpanion pieces to Macaulay's, with their virulent anti-Byronic strain. While Dickens' comments concerning Byronism in the 18401s,as well as his treatment of Byronism in Martin

Chuzzlewit(1843-44) and Hard Times(1854), reflect the 87 88 disenchantment of this anti-Byronic climate, his presentation of Steerforth in David Copperfield suggests a more complex attitude. Unlike Carlyle, Dickens retained some sympathy for those who recalled Byron and Byronism with an "aching heart."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, author of Historv of Encrland (1848-1861), is not usually remembered as a spokesman on Byronism. Yet two of his early minor pieces, his review of Moore's biography of Byron, and his short story, "Fragments of a Roman Tale," reveal how one Victorian changed his attitude towards Byron from the 1820's to the 1830'~~prior to Carlyle's influential pronouricements on Byron. Although Macaulay later ridiculed the followers of Byron, who "bought pictures of him," "learned his poems by heart, and did their best to write like Mm, and to look like him," Macaulay's excited enthusiasm for Byron's poetry throughout his adolescence argues that he was not immune to the "sentimental measles"("Moore's" 341). Evidence of Macaulay's early partiality towards Byron is found in the numerous letters he wrote to his family and friends while away at schocl. In 1814, he wrote how he was thrilled to receive a copy of Byron's "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" from an older school friend, who, Byron-like, was carefully taking the younger boy under his wFng(Letters 1:43). Like most of the English reading public, Macaulay was enthusiastic about "The Corsair." He expounded on its sublimity and confessed that he preferred it "even to Childe Harold"(l:47). Macaulay also considered a number of Byron's Hebrew Melodies to be among "the happiest effort(sic) of Lord Byron's Genius," and he believed that the eleventh and last stanzas in The Sieqe of Corinth were "unrivalled for beautyW(l:65,73). While shut away at school during the summer of 1815, he lamented to a friend that "if Lord Byron were to publish mêlodies or romances, or Scott metrical tales without number, 1 should never see them, or perhaps hear of them, till Christmas"(l:63). Macaulay's fondness for Byron is also evidenced by his juvenile imitations of the poet. When only eleven, he composed a humorous ballad entitled "Chii.de Hugh and the Labourer," just months after Byron's publication of cantos 1 and 2 of Childe Harold's Pilqrirnaqe(k8-13). He also wrote his own Byronic lyric, "Tears of Sensibility." His lyric opens: No pearl of ocean is so sweet

As that in my Zuleika's eye. No earthly jewel can compete With tears of sensibility.

(Trevelyan 1: 68 )

Another of Macaulay's Byronic literary efforts was a burlesque in which he wrote one very Beppo-like stanza confiding his love of "Gipsy PoetryW(l:35). Macaulay's two slightly erotic contributions to Kniqht's Quarterly Masazine(a Cambridge periodical to which Bulwer also contributed), reveal Byron's 90 continuing influence on the young man.' His choice of "Tristram Merton" as authorial pseudonym also suggests a Childe Harold-like capacity for self-induced melancholy combined with a Byronic aptitude for self-mockery. Most tellingly, however, Macaulay demonstrated his continued receptivity to Byronism in his 1823 contribution to Kniqht's entitled "Fragments of a Roman Tale," This short historical fiction included a Byronic Julius Caesar whose dandyism and theatricality anticipated Bulwer's heroes Glanville and Pelham,' Macaulay's Caesar is a theatrical chameleon who implausibly

assumes a full repertoire of Byronic poses. At times he is a Conrad or Lara, walking gloomily alone in meditative self- absorption, his "imperial brow" identifying hirn with the appropriate air of nobility, and his "compressed mouth" and "penetrating eye" giving him al1 the sternness of a hero of the Oriental Tales. A powerful political leader, he, like Lara, establishes and maintains an immense popularity with the general populace. Caesar frequently shifts from this forbidding pose, however, to that of a dandy. The narrator describes this other Caesar i~ detail:

He was in the prime of manhood. His personal advantages were extremely striking, and were displayed with an extravagant but not ungraceful foppery. His gown waved in loose folds; his long dark curls were dressed with exquisite art, and shone and steamed with odours; his step and gesture exhibited an elegant and commanding figure in every posture of polite languor, ("Fragments" 34)

With his studied poses, careful attire and dressed hair, Caesar(1ike Pelham and Glanville) is envied by other young men who canriot emulate "the taste of his dress," and the "ease of bis fashionable staggerU(34). More sophisticated than Byron's Juan, Caesar intrigues with his lover Valeria, and, when intercepted unexpectedly, exits a bedroom scene with aplomb, laughing, quoting Anacreon, and flinging Valeria's cuckolded husband aside. At times, Caesar's public image verges on performance, He appears egregiously inattentive, for example, during a game of chance, laughing throughout, chatting with a woman "over his shoulder," kissing "ber hand between every two moves ,'l and '' scarcely" looking at the board(35). Secretly, however, he dominates the game, controls his opponent and succeeds in winning two million sesterces from him. With the mobility of a mythical Byron, he plays another

Byronic role, that of a Sardanapalus. Created little more than a year after Sardanapalus was published, Macaulay's Caesar is like the effemifiate Kicg, carefully dressing his hair and preferring to prate about "humanity, and generosity, and moderation" rather than fight("FragmentsU 39). Like Sardanapalus also, Caesar appears to be incapable of political action. As one of his enemies comments, he seems "unlikely to be in a [political] plot" for he "does nothing but game, feast, intrigue, read Greek, and write versesW(34-5). Caesar also resembles Byron's public image. Like Byron, he expresses a great fondness for Greek women. He 92 falls in love with a maid of Athens, and he waits until his mid- thirties before he forsakes his life of pleasure and poetry to fulfil his political destiny. Condensing the characterization of this multiplicitous hero into a twelve page story, Macaulay accentuates his theatricality. Like Bulwer's Glanville and Pelham, Caesar is an impossibly mobile Byronic figure. He seems, as a second enemy comments, to be "made up of inconsistencies." In Geoffrey Harpham's terms, Caesar justifies "multiple and mutually exclusive interpretationsW(14). Such a figure is a "grotesque," or a hybrid whose "unifying principle" is sensed "but occluded and imperfectly perceivedW(l4).' As if sensing the problematic nature of a character whose inconsistency defies logic, Macaulay attempted to de-mythologize or rationalize his hero. In Harpham's terms, he de-grotesqued the hero, eliminating his ambiguity through simplification. To accomplish this, Macaulay carefully distinguished between the dandy and the politician, the Sardanapalus and the ambitious man. His multiplicitous Caesar is reduced to an ambitious, active politician who temporarily disguises himself while waiting to assume political authority. The hero hints at this simple masquerade late in the story. Referring mysteriously to himself, he speculates about becoming a political leader in the future: "'Perhaps [this leader] may be one whose powers have hitherto been concealed in domestic or literary retirement. Perhaps he may be one, who, while waiting for some adequate 93 excitement, for some worthy opportunity, squanders on trifles a genius, before which might yet be humbled the sword of Pompey and the gown of Cicero. Perhaps he may now be disputing with a sophist; perhaps prattling with a

mistress. . . . 1 It (38) Caesar's inactivity, sensuality and Sardanapalean passivity are to be understood as merely aspects of a mask that disguises his political ambition. Curiously, one of Bulwerts critics, J.W. Oakley, makes the same argument about Pelham, suggesting that Bulwer's hero assumes the guise of a dandy while preparing himself for a political career. Macaulay's rationalization, however, does not eliminate his character's grotesquenrss. Rather, it suggests the author's ambivalence towards a figure whose mutability is sirnultaneously attractive and repulsive. This ambivalence is evidenced in Macaulay's brief sketch of Caesar's double, Claudio, who, like Caesar, combines opposing characteristics. Claudio is an extremely unappealing blend of libertinism and effeminacy: [Claudio] was a youth whose slender figure and beautiful

countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex. But the ferninine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the mingled sensuality and ferocity of their expression. The libertine audacity of his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his apparel, seemed to indicate at least a partial

insanity. (40) For Macaulay, Caesar's ugly double is both sensual and 94 effeminate, an explicitly erotic but unattractive version of Caesar himself. When reflected in this double, Caesarts dandyism and slight effeminacy become unattractive, his libertinism unsightly and suggestive of mental illness. Macaulay's attitude toward the Byronic figure was less ambivalent in the early 1830ts, when he reviewed Moore's biography of Byron. Like most of his contemporaries, he had long since rejected the figure. In an 1831 letter to his sister,

Macaulay expressed his distaste for Byronism- "1 never wrote anything with less heart," he confided. "1 do not like [Moore's] book," and "1 do not like the hero1'(Letters 2~37).To his publisher, Napier, he similarly confided that his review was

"wretchedly badW(2:40). Never before in his life had he written

"any thing so much against the grain." Macaulay's review anticipated Carlyle's later portrayal of Byron as a comic grotesque. He simplified the poet and his poetry, voicing the common cornplaint that Byron's heroes were reducible to one proud, moody figure, and that this figure was the same as the public's one-dimensional image of Byron. He reduced Byron also by discrediting his legendary genius. Byron, he contended, "was the creature of his age," and would have succeeded equally well under the reigns of Charles 1, Charles II and George 1, whether he wrote "rhyming plays," or "monotonous" smooth verse(''Moore's" 331-2). This infinitely adaptable Byron was merely a product of his environment, a commonplace figure of mediocrity rather than a genuine genius. Macaulay also de- 95 mythologized Byron by discrediting the legend that he, like his heroes, strangely embodied both nobility and baseness. Mentioning Byron's weaknesses immediately after he refers to his strengths, Macaulay makes his readers focus on Byron's "misery and

debasement" rather than on his "eminent advantages, " Byron ' s unsound mind, rather than his "great intellectual powers"(306-7). He reminds them that if Byron's house was "ancient" and "noble," it was also "degraded and impoverished," and similarly suggests that Byron's beautiful head was more than cornpensated for by his lame foot(307). By the time Macaulay ends his list of striking contrasts with a derisive epithet, calling Byron a "handsome cripple," he has reduced Byron's complexity, replacing his singularity with a pathetic ignobility(307). Macaulay also reduced Byron by depicting him as an "effeminatus," a comrnonplace signifier of civic enfeeblement within classical republican discourse.' Simplifying the hero's complex sexuality, he relegated him to a negative signifier, classifying him as nonmasculine, as a nonwarrior. Macaulay managed this by infantalizing Byron, insisting that he "was truly a spoiled child, not merely the spoiled child of his parent, but the spoiled child of nature, the spoiled child of fortune, the spoiled child of fame, the spoiled child of society"(307). Embellishing this portrait of a miniature, non-threatening child-

Byron, Macaulay employed other diminutive terms. Byron was not only a "spoiled child." He was also a "froward and petted darling," and a "sort of [public] whipping boyW(308-9). 96 Macaulay also transformed Byron into an effeminatus by associating him with the familiar trappings of civic corruption: luxury, mental weakness and physical enfeeblement. Summarizing Byron's Venetian experience, he commented that the poet "plunged into wild and desperate excesses," indulging in "Midnight draughts of ardent spirits and Rhenish wines" that worked "the ruin of his fine intellectU(312). In this unhealthy climate,

Macaulay continued, Byron's "hair turned grey," his "food ceased to nourish him," and a "hectic fever withered him up," so that it "seemed that his body and mind were about to perish togetherfl(312). According to this description, Byron fully embodied the classical effeminatus. He was physically incapable, morally corrupt and mentally unstable. Even Macaulay's eulogizing depiction of Byron's death insisted on the poet's weakness and "delicate frame." Byron, he insinuated, was a pitiful victim, not a great hero (314) . Macaulay lastly turned Byron into a comic effeminatus by associating him with Sardanapalus, a figure who was synonymous in the period with effeminacy, sensuality and passivity. He focused on Sardanapalus in his biographical portrait of Byron, disdainfully remarking that Sardanapalus discredited himself with his anxiety to obtain a looking-glass so "that he may be seen to advantage" in battle(333). He was merely a disagroeable and ludicrous figure, a nonsensical mixture of "heroism" and "effeminacy," "contempt of death," and "dread of a weighty helmet. " Carlyle also underwent a change of heart concerning Byronism between the 1820's and 1830%. Although this alteration has been discussed, Carlyle's attitudes have not usually been considered alongside those of other Victorians. Charles Richard Sanders thoroughly documents Carlyle and Jane Welsh's early admiration of the hero, and places this within the context of Carlyle's philosophy of individual maturation found in Sartor Resartus. Byron, he argues, "fought the good fight," like Burns and Goethe, although they differed "in the degree to which they realized victoryn(104). Carlyle, according to this critic, leaves Byron in a state where he has conquered the Everlasting No, is passing through the Center of Indifference where his sense of humor has been fully emancipated and has achieved dominance over lesser senses, and appears to be in sight of the country of the Everlasting Yea with its positive beliefs, its constructive action, its higher individualism, and its Entsagen.

( 104 Elfenbein usefully places Carlyle's commentary on Byron within the -- less philosophical -- context of Carlyle's career as journalist. Byron, he argues, threatened Carlyle's professional status because as an aristocrat, his çuccess represented "a domination of literature by the upper classes that threatened the careers of writers who were not gentlemen, like himself"(ll7). Carlyle therefore accused Byron of dilettantism, suggesting that "philosophical critics like himself [werej the true professionals"(l20). Elfenbein, following Sadleir, also suggests that Carlyle borrowed William Magim's clothes metaphor from his Fraser's article, "Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer's Novels," to articulate his anti-Byronism in Sartor Resartus(Sad1eir 195-97; Elfenbein 101). Like Macaulay and Bulwer, Carlyle's feelings towards Byron were complex and far from dispassionate. Most striking is the highly emotional tenor of most of his commentary on Byron. Like Bulwer, he felt enormous grief at Byron's death, as his letter of May 1824 reveals:

Poor Byron! Alas poor Byron! The news of his death came

dom upon my heart like a mass of lead; and yet, the

thought of it sends a painful twinge thro' al1 my being,

as if I had lost a Brother! O God! That so many souls of mud and clay should fil1 up their base existence to its

utmost bound, and this, the noblest spirit in Europe,

should sink before half his course was run! Late so full of fire, and generous passion, and proud purposes, and

now forever dunib and cold! Poor Byron! (Letters 3:68)

As Bulwer described his sense of apocalypse at Byron's death, so Carlyle likened his loss to the loss of a dearly loved brother. Yet Carlyle did not(1ike Bulwe~)pay tribute to Byron with a lifetime of work creating Byronic figures. Rather, he chose, like 99 Macaulay, to remove himself from Byronism, disparaging it and romanticism with his famous injunction in Sartor Resartus: "Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe"(Works 1:132). By 1828, Carlyle had already begun to raze the Byron edifice by reducing the hero, contending that the poet was uninspired and unoriginal. In his "Goethe," published in July of 1828, he contrasted Byron unfavourably with the German poet, developing a portrait of Goethe as the original inspired prophet of romanticism, who spoke as a "voice from unknown regions"(6:189). With Werther came the "first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge, which, in country after country, men's ears have listened to, till they were deaf to al1 elseV(Works 6:189). In contrast to this first lone prophetic voice, Byron -- a romantic who followed Goethe -- was unenlightened and given to absurd histrionics. A "race of Sentimentalists," Carlyle called this group of imitators, "funereal choristers," a "tearful class" who "have al1 long since, like sick children, cried themselves to restn(6:189). Byron was not only among this group, Carlyle contended, but he was also "the wildest, the gloomiest, and it may be hoped the last" of them(Works 2:189). Carlyle typically heightened the contrast between Goethe and Byron by raising the former to the status of a great spiritual leader, and reducing Byron to the status of a sick or deranged animal. If Goethe expressed "that dim, rooted pain, under which al1 thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing," Byron tended to "snarl and snap in malignant wise, 'like dog distract, or monkey sick"'(Works 6:188-9). 100 Carlyle again diminished Byron in "Burns," published in 1828, This time, he focused on Byron's theatricality, an aspect of Byronism that increasingly became a target for him. Establishing grounds for his repudiation of Byron, he celebrated Burns' "indisputable air of Truth," and his "Sinceritv"(Works 7:9): Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling: the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has

risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. (7:9) After installing Burns as a poet of sincerity, and preaching upon the value of a poet's "genuine earnestness," Carlyle turned to Byron, and asserted that Byron's poetry was "not true," his heroes not "real menn(7:10): Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not

these characters, does not the character of their author, which more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature? (7:lO) Like Macaulay, Carlyle challenged the complexity of Byron's heroes by suggesting their theatricality. As Caesar's rnutability 101 is explained by his deliberate masquerade, so the dramatic appeal of Byron's larger-than-life heroes can be explained by spurious theatrics: Surely, al1 these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt and moody desperation, with

so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humour, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of

a man in the business of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. (7:lO) Relegating Byron's works to the realm of bad theatre, Carlyle located Byron outside the real world; "theatrical, false" and "affected," Byron's work had become insignificant and inappropriate for the challenges of an age that needed earnest and sincere poets(7:lO-11). Carlyle's position on Byron gradually began to resemble Macaulay's. He resolved his feelings for Byron by reducing him until he was little more than a comic grotesque. Carlyle accomplished this, like Macaulay, by infantalizing Byron, hinting at the poet's weakness and immaturity. Byron, he comented in

1824, was a "young man; still struggling amid the perplexities, and sorrows and aberrations, of a mind not arrived at maturity or settled in its proper place in lifel'(Letters 3~361).It is likely, as Elfenbein suggests, that Carlyle stressed Byron's

supposed immaturity because of his own sense of inferiority to

the poet. He was 29 at the time of Byron's death and had achieved 102 far less than Byron had at that age. In later years, Carlyle developed this characterization of Byron as a young man, reducing the hero to a spoiled child. Quoting Mrs. Hunt's infamous comment

in 1832, he noted that Byron was "'like a schoolboy that had got a plain bunn(sic) given him instead of a plum onell'(Letters 6:lW). Like Macaulay, Carlyle also hinted that Byron was an effeminatus. In "Goethe's Works" in 1832 he contrasted him with Cervantes, whom Carlyle called a true hero, a "Great" or "strong man." If Cervantes "fought stoutly," "worked stoutly," and with "stout cheerfulness endured famine and nakedness and the world's ingratitude," Byron, a "strong man, of recent time,"

fights little for any good cause anywhere; works weakly as

an English i~ïà;wéakiy delivers himself from such working; with weak despondency endures the cackling of plucked geese at St. James's; and, sitting in sunny Italy, in his coach- and-four, at a distance of two thousand miles from them, writes, over many rems of paper, the following sentence, with variations: Saw ever the world one qreater or unhappier? (Works 9:177-8) Here Byron is characterized as weak, cowardly, self-indulgent, and insincere. Used to the luxury of a pampered life in Italy, he is merely a "sharn strong mann(9:178). Carlyle's fiercest censure of Byron occurred, however, with his criticism of the hero's dandyism. After he read Maginn's 1830 review of Bulwer's novels in Fraser's, he began to associate 103 Byron with the dandies. In 1831, he reduced Byron to this, for him, negligible status, ironically contrasting Byron's dandiacal dramatics with the torments of Christ: "Byron we cal1 'a Dandy of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief.' That is a brief definition of him"(Two Notebooks 230). By 1832, his assessment of the hero as a morally depraved, uninspired dandy became little more than caricature: No genuine productive Thought was ever revealed by him to mankind; indeed no clear undistorted vision into anything, or picture of anything; but al1 had a certain falsehood, a brawling theatrical insincere character. The man's moral nature too was bad, his demeanour, as a man, was

bad, What was he, in short, but a huge sulky Dandy; of giant dimensions, to be sure, yet still a Dandy. . . .

(Letters 6949) With Carlyle's "in short" reduction, Byron becomes a comic grotesque, an affected and inconsequential dandy made huge by a public too easily fooled by sham theatrics.

Like his fellow Victorians, Charles Dickens appears to have experienced a disenchantment with Byronism that is reflected in his occasional criticism of Byronic self-indulgence and false sentimentalism. It is not clear when Dickens first became 104 acquainted with Byron's works -- Byron's name is notably absent from his list of early favourites in his own unfinished autobiography and from Dickens ' David ~op~erfield .' Dickens ' letters, with quotations drawn from Byron's work, however, reveal that he was well versed in his poetry. He was familiar with Don

Juan, for instance. In a letter in June of 1837, he quoted from canto 4, offhandedly referring to two acquaintances as "arcades ambo," or "blackguards bothff(DJ4:744);Letters 1:273). In "The Bloomsbury Christening" in Sketches by Boz, his character "long

Dumpsu assumes a Wery sepulchral voice and rueful accent" and rises "from his chair like the ghost in Don Juann(SJ 481). Dickens was also familiar with Childe Harold's Pilsrimaqe. In an 1839 letter, he jokingly referred to Lady Morgan as a "hereditary bondswoman"(CHP 2:720;Letters 1:490). And, discussing the poem in 1841, he criticized the phrases, "Dazzled and drunk with beautyqt and "The heart reels with its fulness." These, he felt, were

Vess suggestive of Venus than of gin-and-watern(Johnson 1:351), According to Edgar Johnson, after Dickens made this observation, without warning [he] slapped his brow, tossed his waving

hair, and exclaimed, "Starid back! I am suddenly seized with

the divine afflatus!" Taking up a pencil, he looked wildly around for paper, and finding none, stalked to the window and wrote on the white-painted shutter: "LINES TO E .P. ------. AFTER BYRON" ''0 maiden of the amber-droppinq hair May 1, Byronicallv, thy praises utter? Drunk with thy beauty, tell me, mav 1 dare To sins thy paeans borne upon a shutter?" (Johnson 1:350-51) Dickens pleasure in assuming a Byronic pose, and the energy of his theatrics, indicate not only his familiarity with Byron's poems, but also his sense of the great pleasure that might be had at the expense of Byronism. Dickens was acquainted with a number of people who had known Byron, and who likely passed on their persona1 remembrances of hime6As a frequent visitor at Gore House, he often saw the Countess of Blessington and the Count D'Orsay, Regency notables who did not share the earnest anti-Byronic and anti-dandiacal mood of Carlyle and Macaulay. Dickens enjoyed the Countess' Company, and, like Bulwer, presumably heard many of her recollections of Byron first-hand.' He was also inspired by the Count D'Orsay's flamboyant and still surprisingly fresh dandyism. After meeting D'Orsay, according to one of Dickens' friends, there could be observed "a great difference in Charles Dickens' appearance and dress, for he imitated D'Orsay in cut, brilliance of colour, ornament, materialsU(qtd in Moers 220).' Moers describes Dickensf appearance, which equals Bulwer's for its egregiousness: For the daytime Dickens affected a swallow-tail coat with a very high velvet collar, an enormous, billowing black satin stock with double breast-pin; a crimson or green velvet waistcoat (sometimes two under-waistcoats) with 106 a very long gold chain "meandering over it," and tight or "Cossack" trousers; for evening, black pantaloons with buttons at the ankles, speckled black silk stockings and pumps, a puffed out shirt-frill and a white cravat ornamented with a bow "about eight inches wide!" Over al1 this, there was the pretty face, oval and girlish, with

slightly protruding, half-open lips, brilliant eyes, and a glistening head of brown hair either falling into his eyes

or curling (artificially) over his temples. (Moers 220)' Dickens' striking appearance suggests a Bulwer-like receptivity to romantic poses that did not impress some Victorians. Carlyle

commented that Dickens was "dressed rather a la d'Orsay than well," and called Dickens' face one of the "most extreme mobilitv, which he shuttles about, eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all," a description that recalls Moore's description of Byron's

face and mouth(Letters 12 :BI) .'O Dickens1 occasional treatment of Byronism in his novels and letters in the early 1840's assumed a consistent tone of pleasurable amusement. In The Old Curiositv Shop(1840-41), the swaggering Dick Swiveller makes a ludicrous drunken exit from the Marchioness quoting Byron: "'Fare thee well, and if for ever, then for ever fare thee well -- and put up the chain, Marchioness, in case of accidents'"(0CS 431).11 In 1841, he enjoyed a ruming joke with Daniel Maclise prompted by the death of Dickens' raven, which both men mourned melodramatically as though stunned by the loss of a Byron. Dickens called himself a 107 "bereaved friend" suffering from "profound sorrow" and Maclise

called their "friend's decease last night at eleven" a ''~hock'~ that was "greatn(Letters 2:232,232n). He then called the raven a true Byronic hero:

1 think he was just of those grave melancholic habits, which are the noticeable signs of your intended suicide -- his solitary life -- those gloomy tones . . . his sole~~ suit of Raven black which never grew rusty -- Altogether his character was the very prototype of a Byron Hero -- and even of a Scott a Mastzr of Ravenswood. -- We ought to be glad he had no family 1 suppose -- he seems to have intended it however for his solicitude to deposit in those Banks in the Garden his Savings were always very touching -- / I suppose his obsequies will take place immediately. It is beautiful - the idea of his return even after death to the scene of his early youth . . . having clearly booked his place in that immortality Coach driven by Dickens -- / Yes, he committed suicide. . . . (Letters 2:232n) With this joke, Maclise and Dickens joined the anti-Byronic mood of the period, transforming the Byronic figure into a non- threatening silly caricature -- in this case, a comic bird, who, Manfred-like, allegedly commits suicide."

In the early 1840rs, Dickens was also still sympathetic towards imitators of Byron who succumbed to romantic melancholy," and he occasionally fell into romantic states of enchantment in which he found Byron's poetry expressive. 108 Following bis powerful emotional experience of Niagara Falls, he invoked Childe Harold." And when he travelled to Europe, he visited many tourist spots replete with Byronic references, and he expressed an interest in staying at Byron's villa. 15 The satiric portrait of Jefferson Brick in Martin Chuzzlewit

(1843-44) marks a change in Dickerrs' attitude towards Byronism, particularly his disenchantment with republicanism. Dickens was aware of the popular mythology of Byron's republicanism: Byron's partnership in The Liberal with Leigh Hunt; his unfulfilled desire to visit the United States; and his participation in the fight for Greek independence. It is not iinprobable, then, that the young, would-be heroic Dickens, en route to America, aspired to become another hero of letters in the liberal tradition, preparing his own analysis of America's democracy in an anecdotal work that could be read alongside Harriet Martineau's recent Society in America(1837) or even Alexis de Tocqueville's De la Démocratie en Amerique(1835-40). Dickens' extreme exhilaration at the outset of his visit and his frequent visits to prisons, factories arid mental health institutions in Amerîca support the possibility of his sense of persona1 mission. Dickens' allusions to Byronism in Martin Chuzzlewit, however, reveal his disappointment with the American experiment in republicanism. The Byronic Jefferson Brick is a corrupt, even reprehensible caricature that reflects Dickens' growing scepticism concerning heroic journalism. Brick is introduced as an extremely young imitator of Byron, an infantilized burlesque 109 version of the liberal poet, with a tell-tale Byronic collar: The individual who sat clipping and slicing as aforesaid at the Rowdy Journals, was a small young gentleman of very juvenile appearance, and unwholesomely pale in the face; partly, perhaps from intense thought, but partly, there is no doubt, from the excessive use of tobacco, which he was at that moment chewing vigorously. He wore his shirt-collar turned dom over a black ribbon; and his lank hair, a fragile crop, was not only smoothed and parted back from his brow, that none of the Poetry of his aspect might be

lost, but had, here and there, been grubbed up by the roots: which accounted for his loftiest developments being somewhat

pimply. (Mç 261) Here Dickens provides a comic version of the Byronic sneer and

aloof countenance. Brick has a "snub nose" which is "very much turned up at the end, as with a lofty scorn," and his upper lip, which should show a beautiful dark moustache, shows only a scant glimpse of something that looks rather like "a recent trace of gingerbreadu(261), Brick's cornical foppery is combined with delusions of grandeur and bad journalism. He misconceives the consequence of his mediocre work, and stoops to corrupt newspaper practices, publishing slanderous and forged materials while pretending to be a journalist who is in "'the van of human civilization and moral purity"'(263). Brick's colleague, Colonel Diver, makes extraordinary claims for the upstart, voicing his extremely 110 lmplausible conviction that Brick's recent articles have made him "'most obnoxious to the British Parliament"' and that English "'aristocratie circles . . . quail before the name of Jefferson Brick"' (262).

Dickens also shows his disillusionment with the American experiment in Martin Chuzzlewit through Putnam Smif., a would-be

Byronic writer. Putnam writes to the young Martin desiring that he be given an expense-free six-month stay in England so that he might fulfil his great potential. He has fed himself on heady dreams of grandeur from Byron's "'Cain: a Mystery,"' and imagines that he cm find an epic to write on any subject, even on an "'alligator basking in the slimett'(364).Here Dickens again mocks the vain-glory of aspiring liberals who misconceive their significance in a world. These negative portraits of Brick and Putnam may be related to Carlyle's rising influence on Dickens in the late 1830's and

40's. According to his son, Henry, Dickens claimed that "the man who had influenced him most waç Thomas CarlyleW(H. Dickens 189).

Forster commented that "there was no one whom in later life he honoured so much, or had a more profound regard forM(l:204). Dickens' conversion to Carlylean ideas occurred during the 1840's, bis "dark decade" as it has been called, when he became a mature novelist seriously concerned with social reform. Humphry House suggests the change in Dickens' outlook, commenting that in "Pickwick a bad smell was a bad smell; in Our Mutual Friend it is a problem"(l35). Jack Lindsay suggests that in Carlyle Dickens 111 found "philosophic support for his feeling that something was radically wrongn(203), We can see Dickens1 growing Carlyleanism in The Chimes(1844), which preaches humanitarianism instead of cold mechanical systems. Dombev and Son(1846-8) reveals Dickens' Carlylean sense of the empty promise of the aristocracy for spirltual leadership.

By the time Dickens wrote Hard Times(1954) -- a full decade after Martin Chuzzlewit -- he had little time for Byronism. Hard Times is Dickens' most obviously Carlylean novel, He dedicated the anti-utilitarian, anti-mechanistic novel to Carlyle, telling him admiringly: "1 know it contains nothing in which you do not think with me, for no man knows your books better than 1. 1 want to put in the first page of it that it is inscribed to Thomas

Carlyle. May I?ft(Nonesuch,567). Like Dombey and Son, this novel revealed the corruption of indolence and was his harshest treatment of Byronism. James Harthouse, the novel's Byronic figure, is an unrernittingly negative portrait of a corrupt rake who is Childe Harold-like in his restlessness. He had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found

it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. (G125)

Like the lowest sort of Benthamite whom Carlyle deplores in

Sartor Resartus, Harthouse is driven solely by his desire for 112 pleasurable stimulus, expecting the universe to make him happy. In Carlyle's terms, he is like a vulture who flies through the universe "shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given" him(Carlyle, Works 1:132),

Lacking any Carlylean sense of purpose, James Harthouse enters Coketown on a whim. When his brother suggests that he "'go in'" for statistics with the "'hard Fact fell~ws,~"he likes the idea, and decides that he is as ready to "'go in"' for statistics as for anything elsen(125). Harthousets willingness to "'go in"' for just about anything is closely related to his slippery mobility. Reminiscent of the masquerading Pelham, he easily pretends to be a "hard Fact" man, impressing Mr. Gradgrind and

his colleagues with his knowledge of a "blue-book or two," and assuring Mr. Bounderby that he is "'entirely and completely of [his] way of thinking. On conviction'"(l25-26). Dickens particularly condemns Harthouse's opportunist mobility when narrating his attempted seduction of Louisa. Like the rakish

Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park, Harthouse attempts to win Louisa's affection by playing upon her ardent feelings for her brother. When Harthouse has succeeded in part, the narrator hints at the insidiousness of his play-acting:

[Louisa's] colour brightened, and she turned to him with a

look of interest. "1 never in my life," he thought, "saw anything so remarkable and so captivating as the lighting of those features!" His face betrayed his thoughts -- perhaps 113 without betraying him, for it might have been according to its instructions so to do. (E 169) To Harthouse's corrupt mind, such theatrical efforts are an enjoyable game; the conquest of a woman such as Louisa would be "a new sensationH(167). Such indolent dilettantism recalls Carlyle's repeated attacks on the aristocracy. If the Byronic Jefferson Brick exists in a society which J. Hillis Miller suggests is "pure surface," a "surface which hides a profound void," Harthouse is himself a profound void(l30)- Dickens emphasizes Harthouse's hollowness by displaying his dandyism, an aspect of his personality that appeals to Louisa's brother, Tom, "the young whelp," Harthouse's glamour is demonstrated in the scene where he seduces Tom. His air is easy; he smokes a cigar carelessly. Watching him, Tom notices his attractive style: "'He don't seem to care about his dress!' thought Tom, 'and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is! "'(m 132). Like Glanville seducing Pelham, Harthouse seduces Tom by taking him up to his persona1 chambers to entertain him. The narrator recounts Tom's thoughts as he enjoys the excitement of being with Harthouse:

There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate

with such a waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intirnate way, by such a voice; in being on such off-hand

terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers; that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself. (a133) Harthouse's glamour, Dickens hints, consists of little more than 114 a pair of whiskers, a voice and a waistcoat. Playing with the satanic implications of Byron mythology, Dickens depicts Rarthouse lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, standing before the empty fire-grate, and smoking his cigar. Obliquely, Tom senses that there is now "a kind of agreeable demon who had only to hover over him, and he must give up his whole sou1 if requiredw(133),

Dickens wrote David Copperfield(1849-50) four years before Hard Times(1854). It, therefore, postdates Dickens' conversion to Carlyleanism, and predates his negative treatment of Byronism in Hard Times. Like Pelham, this complex novel has been read often as a Bildunwrornan, a reading prompted perhaps by Mario Praz's suggestion that the Byronic Steerforth and his friend Copperfield are a study in contrasts. Praz influentially contends that the contrast between these two characters is "equivalent, in the language of Dickens, to Carlyle's 'Close your Byron, open your Goethetr'(128).Following Praz's lead, many critics have discussed a progressive movement in David Copperfield, with the hero moving away from romanticism to a serious adoption of the Carlylean work ethic. Jerome Buckley, in Season of Youth: The Bildunqsroman from Dickens to Goldinq(1974), provides the most succinct example of this kind of analysis. Accepting the traditional "undisciplined 115

heart" analysis initiated by Gwendolyn ~eedham,l6 he warns that we "miss the point "if we forget that David Copperfield is designed as a Bildunssroman"(35). We must not Vail to see that almost every character and incident may have some final relation to the development of the herot'(35). In this analysis, each character serves as an object lesson: David's mother, little

Em'ly, Aunt Betsey, and Rosa Dartle ail becorne examples of undisciplined hearts. Although David fails to learn self- discipline frorn these negative examples, he does so, Buckley argues, from his Carlylean conversion at the novel's end. Following the pattern of Sartor Resartus, David falls into despair in Europe (his "Everlasting No"), then discovers his life's work as a writer(his "Everlasting Yea"). After this lfsaving adjustment to work and society," Buckley concludes, "David has conquered self-indulgent sorrow and is prepared at

last to discipline his af fectionstf(42 ) ." Buckleyfs reading of David Copperfield as Carlylean Bildunssroman does not adequately account for the novel's

Byronism. Nor does it take into account the novel's fictional antecedents, principally Bulwer's treatment of Byronism within his metaphysical" Bildunqsroman, Ernest Maltravers(l837). and its sequel, ~lice(l838).'~As Margaret King and Elliot Engel suggest, these influential novels represent the culmination of Bulwer's movement front romanticism to Carlyleanism. Composed during the first two years of Queen Victoria's reign, when "the social and political forces in flux during William's monarchy 116 were jelling into more solid Victorianism," they show the Wertherian-Teufelsdrochian pilgrimage towards Victorian social commitment. David Cop~erfieldechoes Bulwer's work, suggesting an interesting Bulwerian flavour to Dickens' Carlyleanism. Copperfield parallels Maltravers with the rigorous trials it imposes on its hero. Both Ernest and David are supposed to learn discipline and patience through suffering, grief, hardship, and hard work. Both suffer from false idealism; they admire the "Beautiful and the Perfect" and must learn to pursue the more Victorian ethical ideal of "the Good, the True, and the Honest." Both are very human, marked "with the weaknesses derived from humanity, with the strength that we inherit from the soul''(~ 1:vi). And both must learn to steer clear of two potentially dangerous alter-ego figures who, in Christensen's terms, are like Scylla and Charybdis: Ernest must navigate between Castruccio and Lumley Ferrars, who represent his excessive romanticism and destructive materialism; David must steer between Steerforth and Uriah Heep, who likewise embody his narcissistic and self-seeking natures. These Carlylean Bildunssromane also develop the %lumine" theme from Sartor Resartus, Bulwer in Godolphin calls this worship of a female idol, "Nympholep~y."'~Ernest wrongheadedly becomes smitten with mattainable women who represent his false idealism. He attaches himself first to Mme. de Ventadour, a married woman, then to Florence Lascelles, then to Evelyn

Cameron, an extremely young woman whom he suddenly discovers may be his own daughter. Ernest's misplaced idolatry, which is at cross-purposes with his Carlylean journey, is ultimately disastrous. His now demonic alter-egos threaten two of his female idols, Florence and Evelyn, and Florence even dies, exhausted by the conflicting demands of Ernesttsdarker personalities. Florence's death leaves Ernest full of grief and remorse and "more hopelessly ghost-ridden than everW(Christensen 91). David also suffers from "Nympholepsy." He childishly and very humanly falls in love with little Em'ly, the "eldest Miss

Larkins," and Dora Spenlow. This misplaced worship, like Ernestrs,has tragic consequences. Little Emrly is ruined by David's destructive Byronic alter-ego, Steerforth; Agnes, his true spiritual partner, is threatened by his other, acquisitive alter-ego, Uriah Heep; and David himself ignores Dora's humanity, imaginatively transfiguring her into a beautiful child-wife(1ike Ernest's daughter-lover) and establishing a patronizing father- daughter relationship with her until she dies." At the close of these Bildunqsroméine, both heroes experience profound Carlylean epiphanies prompted by their recognition of the deep love bestowed on them by their female soul-mates. Ernest Maltravers and Alice are respectively subtitled "The Eleusinia" and "The Mysteries," titles which Christensen suggests indicate the symbolic centrality of Alice Darvil, who represents "Nature," Bulwer's symbolic version of Carlyle's "Natural Supernaturalism."

These novels, Christensen argues, "deal with the 'paths' through which 'Nature' [Alice] conducts the artist[Ernest] toward his 118 initiation within 'the inner temple of her mysteries"'(83). Thus Ernest is transfigured when he discovers that his youthful lover, Alice, has remained constant, despite her eighteen-year

separation from him. Returning home from his hopeless wanderings abroad, he finds in her "that which shames and bankrupts the ideal!" He explains: "Here have I found a virtue, that, coming at once from God and Nature, has been wiser than al1 my false philcsophy, and firrner than al1 my pride! . . . the example of the sublime moral that teaches us with what mysterious beauty and immortal holiness the Creator has endowed our human nature when hallowed by our human affections! . . . And your fidelity to my erring self has taught me ever to love, to serve, to cornpassionate, to respect, the community of God's creatures to which -- noble and elevated though you are -- you yet belong!" (Alice 589-90) Alice plays a symbolic role as Ernest's artistic guide, "a beneficent, powerfully dynamic, and fertile principle," supporting him for years despite his apparent estrangement(Christensen 82).

Agnesf role in David Copperfield parallels the role of Bulwerfsheroine. She is a self-abnegating angel who, like Alice, waits patiently at the borders of the novel for the erring hero to turn to her for love, spiritual guidance and ultimate redemption. She warns David of the dangers of Steerforth, and supports him with her letters when he is directionless on the 119 continent. When he, like Ernest, returns home to England, he

understands that Agnes has bea the most powerful influence in his life. "'What 1 am, you have made me, Agnes, "' David acknowledges, and promises always to be influenced by her for

good : "1 want you to know, yet dontt know how to tell you, that

al1 rny life long 1 shall look up to you, and be guided by

you, as 1 have been through the darkness that is past. . . 1 shall always look to you, and love you, as 1 do now, and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you have always been. Until 1 die, my dearest

sister, 1 shall see you always before me, pointing upward!"

( 843 1 Agnes, like Alice, combines Victorian practicality and spiritual enlightenment, helping David to choose a Carlylean present rather than his shadowy past of false ideals. The Carlyleanism of these Bildunssromane is revealed also by the heroes' chosen vocations. Both are men of letters, not Whig politicians like Pelham and Glanville. And both achieve their status upon their Carlylean rejection of false idealism. At the close of Alice, Ernest returns to work after his long absence. He once more entered upon the career so long suspended . . . No longer despising Man as he is, and no longer exacting from al1 things the ideal of a visionary standard, he was more fitted to mix in the living World, and to minister usefully to the great objects that refine and elevate our race. (Alice 590) David similarly writes with renewed vigour after mourning the deaths of Dora and Steerfortb on the continent. He comments: tttX fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took

strong possession of me. As 1 advanced in the execution of this task, 1 felt it more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well"'(816-17). Like Maltravers', David's renewed creativity is comected with a humble spirit and a sense, as Irène Simon suggests, of his shared humanity(53).

The author has said his Say; he retreats once more into silence and into shade; he leaves you alone with the creations he has called to life, the representations of his motions and his thoughts, the intermediators between the individual and the crowd; children, not of the clay, but of the spirit . . . . (Preface to Ernest Maltravers vii)

No longer wishing to explore Pelham-like infatuation in Ernest Maltravers and Alice, Bulwer replaced the fascinating and mysterious Glanville with an Italianized Byronic caricature- Castruccio Caesarini, as he is aptly called, is a would-be Byron, a mediocre poet who longs for fane and whines when he is not recognized as a genius." Bulwer abbreviated his Pelham- Glanville romance into two chapters, with Ernest quickly 121 understanding the importance of Castruccio as an object lesson in his de~elopment.'~And he deflated the romantic tension between Ernest and Castruccio, presenting their romantic interlude through a third-person narrator who hints that dandiacal triflers like Castruccio are passé in Ernest's Victorian world. Yet Ernest Maltravers and Alice treat Byronism with more

ambivalence than their Carlylean structures should allow. The Byronic Castruccio Caesarini may be reduced by the narrator, and rnay be dismissed and forgotten by the Bilduncrsroman hero, but he does not disappear. Insane and vengeful, he reappears in Ernest's life to torture him. He helps to annihilate one of Ernest's female idols, and he murders Ernest's rational alter-ego. Castruccio's continuing spiritual influence over Ernest is also show in Ernest's almost permanent withdrawal from society. He

travels Childe Harold-like for much of his life, obsessing over his past, and demonstrating a strange inability to integrate himself into society. Bulwer's preface to the novel, as quoted above, is also intriguing. Bulwer writes despondently, like his haunted Bildungsroman hero, sad to part from the idealized creations of his imagination. David Cop~erfieldalso treats Byronism more ambivalently than is consistent with its Carlyleanisrn. We see this ambivalence, first, with David's recurring melancholy, which echoes the mood of Bulwer's first-person narrators in Deveureux(l829) and The Disowned(l828), Bulwer's post-Pelham novels. As Christensen suggests, these autobiographers do not 122 write about the Carlylean "Present." They write about "the past!"(Devereux 1955). The narrator and hero at the end of The Disowned longs only for the years to pass, so that he can join

the grave of his Byronic friend, Mordaunt. As Christensen argues:

As the survivor or heir of his youth, he no longer needs to live as a mature being in his own right. Indeed he is al1 but a corpse now, and the composition of his autobiography often enables him to refer to himself in the third person as the decomposing corpse he has literally become to his reader: "the very Worms are starving upon his dust." . . . Only his memories have value, and when the body that serves simply as the sepulchral storehouse of those memories has fully decayed, his mémoires will preserve their immortality. (73-74) In Deveureux, similarly, the autobiographer, Morton Deveureux, preserves the ideal of his lover, Idora, in his memory, where it will remain uncorrupted. He invites the reader in his introduction into this "commune between the living and deadM(xvi). "Corne," he calls, "and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wild existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aught which mirrors the reflection"(Devereux xvi) . David Copperfield also draws us into the cave of the "PastIt(DC 844). Like Bulwerfs autobiographers, David calls his shadows out of his past, animates them, and then mournfully dismisses them. Closing his autobiography, he finds "realities" 123 "melting" from him, like "shadows" that he dismisses(877). Of these shadows, the most significant is Steerforth. Dickens was not interested in presenting a Byronic caricature, a diminished Castruccio. Instead, he returned to an earlier Bulwerian model, writing a Pelham-like first-person Bildunqsroman. This choice allowed hirn to explore romantic obsession and experiment with a first-person narrator, who, like Pelham, remains infatuated with a fascinating Byronic friend.

As David admits towards the end of the novel, the event of

Steerforth's death was of such importance to him that it cast a shadow over his recollections of his life:

I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to al1 that has preceded it in these pages, that, from the

begiming of my narrative, 1 have seen it growing larger and larger as 1 advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents

of my childish days. (131) Steerforth, and Steerforth's tragic death are present in David's mind throughout his narrative, The event causes him to transform his friend into a romantic Eastern-Byronic figure and envelop him in mystery, Awed by Steerforth before he even meets him, he waits at his new school, Salem House, examining the door covered with the boys1 inscriptions. Reflecting on how each boy would read the words llTake care of him. He bites," inscribed on the sign he carries, David imagines Steerforth reading these words and feels anx ious : There was one boy -- a certain J. Steerforth -- who cut his name very deep and very often, who, 1 conceived, would read it in a rather strong voice, and afterwards pull my hair. (K 131) Although David fears that Steerforth will be a bully, his tone suggests his attraction to the mysterious young man. Like a Pelham oblivious to Glanville's true nature, David overlooks the first sign of the older boy's character, Steerforth's inscriptions reveal his egotism and love of theatricality. His name is written most often, and with the most emphasis. David, like Pelham, also envelops his Byronic friend in mystery by presenting him through his own and others' enchanted perspectives- Before meeting Steerforth, David hears that he is

"a great scholar," "very good-looking," and at least six years older than David. The boys treat their hero like an exalted Arabian prince, bringing David to him to be "formally received in the school," carrying him "as before a magistraten(84)-

Steerforth's "shed in the playground," likewise, is treated by the boys as a grand palace of a monarch, and Steerforth's inquiry into David's punishments at school is treated as benevolent interest shown towards an inferior in age and status. Like Pelham at Eton, David is impressed by the older boy's kingly beneficence, and feels "bound to him ever afterwards," despite Steerforth's careless dismissal of David's punishment as "'a jolly shame'"(84)- 125 David, however, also unintentionally reveals that Steerforth is not the benevolent prince of his imagination, but a versatile actor, who glories in mystifying the younger boys and cheating them out of their money. Steerforth plays the role of a feudal lord like Lara, exacting money from his loyal vassals, laying claim to the pocket money Peggotty has given David. Then, playing a heroic corsair who alone cm pass in and out of Salem House, Steerforth promises to 'f'smugglethe prog in"' that he will purchase with David's money(85). Steerforth's theatricality is also displayed in his presentation of himself as an Eastern prince. A magician capable of wonders, he lays out on David's moonlit bed the feast of biscuits, cakes and wine. Awed by this

"'royal spxead"', and perhaps by the endearing sound of Steerforth calling hi= "'young Copperfield,"' David camot "think of doing the honours of the feasttt(85).Steerforth arouses the

boys' wonder by dispensing the glorious refreshment and dipping a match into a phosphorus-box, shedding "a blue glare over us that was gone directly!"(85). Perceiving the prodigious dramatic effect of the light, he repeats the experiment at appropriate

moments to "shed a glare" over the boys who sit "in the dark for some time, breathlessM(86). Steerforth's effective presentation of himself as a mysterious and powerful hero relies for effect on David and the other boys' awed responses. With the young and impressionable David, such theatrics are especially effective. Even as an older narrator, he is affected by the remembrance of these effects. A "certain mysterious feeling," he explains, "steals over [him] again'' as he recalls the "secrecy of the

revel, and the whisper in which everything was said"(85). At the close of this enchanting evening, David again describes his feelings for Steerforth, as he views him, "himself un~een'~(Corsair1~234). Deprived of his sleep by the excitement of his recent intimacy with his friend, he secretly watches Steerforth sleeping. Enthralled by the beautiful hero, he describes him romantically and even erotically:

1 thought of him very much after 1 went to bed, and

raised myself, 1 recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. He was a

person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course,

the reason of my mind running on him. (87-8) David's dreaminess recalls Pelham's restless dreaming and Tom's drowsiness after his seduction by the Byronic Harthouse in Hard Times. Tom's dream, however, warns him of Harthouse's menace. He becomes uneasy and violent in his sleep and half recalls "being

stirred up with a bootV(E136). David's dream gives him no such presentiment. As he recalls, there "was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in al1 nightN(= 88). David's dreamy love for Steerforth is increased by his nightly Scheherazade-like telling of tales for his loved friend. As he notes, whatever "1 had within me that was romantic and dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the darkU(94). 127 Like Glanville and Harthouse, Steerforth has an extraordinary ability to mesmerize his audience. David explains Steerforth's effect on Ham and Mr. Peggotty when they visit Salem

House : There was an ease in his manner -- a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering -- which 1 still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it. 1 still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful

voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught 1 know,

of some inborn power of attraction besides (which 1 think a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to

which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not

many persons could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open

their hearts to him in a moment. (104) For David, Steerforth is no comical swaggering Dick Swiveller, nor a caricature of a would-be romantic hero. His larger-than- life presentation of his friend, like Pelham's portrait of Glanville, does not prevent the reader, however, from discerning the hero's flaws. Only David is blind to Steerforth's inordinate cruelty to and callous patronage of Mr. Mell. David's romantic presentation of his boyhood friend continues into adulthood. Like Pelham, who presents his friend as a Lara, David identifies Steerforth as a romantic Childe Harold. Steerforth restlessly spends many nights at sea, prompting Mr Peggotty to describe him as "'wonder,"' or, in Steerforth's 128 sarcastic terms, "'a nautical phenomenont"(323). David explains how he hears of his friend's "being afloat, wrapped in fishermen's clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at floodV(319). Steerforth's restless nature driving him to these nocturnal expeditions parallels Childe Harold's need to press on, his sense that no place will yield him contentment. Admitting his capriciousness, Steerforth explains that he is "'never contented;"' he is fitful and restless because he has never learned discipline -- missing "lit somehow in a bad apprenticeship"'(324). David's portrait of Steerforth as a Harold is re-enforced when fie and David leave Yarmouth. Lamenting their approaching departure, Steerforth asserts that he has "'almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here."' "'1 wish there was not,"' he adds sadly(323). Instead they must "'abandon this buccaneer life'" the next day(323). When Steerforth returns from a second visit to Yarmouth, he describes his Harold-like need to "'Ride-on! Rough-shod if need ber smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over al1 obstacles, and win the raceM'(426). His words recall canto 3 of Childe Harold's Pilqrimaqe:

Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! ...... ~...~.-.~~**.~..~...... -.*.*-..-.--..- Still must 1 on; for 1 am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, or tempest's breath prevail.

(3: 10-18) Although Steerforth, unlike Harold, refers to winning a race, David, with unusual perception, wishes that his friend had "çome worthy race to runN(427).

David romanticizes Steerforth by focusing on bis poses. Like Pelham and Byron's narrators, he observes the hero assume the beautiful but agitated pose of a Byronic figure:

I noticed, 1 remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass

raised in his hand, that, though the freshness of the sea- wind was on his face, and it was ruddy, there were traces

in it, made since 1 last saw it, as if he had applied himself to çome habitua1 strain of the fervent energy which, when roused, was so passionately roused within him.

1: had it i-? my thoughts to remonstrate with Mm upon his desperate way of pursuing any fancy that he took -- such as this buffeting of rough seas, and braving of hard weather-

(426 Steerforth's pose of being driven is complemented by another familiar pose, that of a haunted Lara lost in his own reflections. Coming upon the meditative hero, himself unseen, David again watches him closely: 1 found him alone in Mr. Peggotty's house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his

own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse

him. 1 was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations. (3211 Like a Pelham startling the Byronic Glanville in the graveyard, David frightens Steerforth when he places his hand upon Steerforth's shoulder. The haunted man reproaches David "almost angrily," accusing him of coming upon him '"like a reproachful ghost! "'(321). David continues to focus on Steerforth's meditative and guilt-ridden poses. The hero rises and leans ''moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the f ire. " He stands "leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily dom at the fire." His face expresses a "dark kind of earnestness" as his glance remains ''Lent on the fire"(321-323). David's romanticizing of his friend in adulthood suggests that he, like Pelham, is more interested in writing a romance than a Bildunqsroman. Although the novel's impulse moves him forwards towards discipline, enlightenment and Agnes, this impulse is countered by his continuing feelings for his friend. David's unaltered attachent becomes apparent when he and Steerforth meet years later. Like a Pelham seeing Glanville or a 131 Kaled thrilled by the sight of Lara, David's heart beats fast, and his "old love" for his friend overflows his breast "freshly and spontaneouslyn(287). David's dreamy childhood experience of Steerforth continues with this later encounter. Before the accidental meeting, David goes to see "Julius Caesar," a performance that captivates him with its mingling of "reality and mysteryf'(286). Leaving the godlike Romans on stage, he meets his own private god in a coffee room. Absently reflecting on his past, and likely on Steerforth, he gradually becomes aware of

"the figure of a handsome well-formed young man, dressed with a tasteful easy negligenceU(286). Seeing his old friend, the "shining transparency" of his past again becomes a reality(286). David describes this meeting with al1 the paraphernalia of a romantic reunion. He is entirely overpowered by the encounter,

brushes away bis tears with the "utmost resolution," and laughs

clumsily at his own emotions as he sits happily, "side by side" by his friend(287). Steerforth plays the role of a romantic lover, meeting an old, but still interesting paramour. He applies

the diminutive to David, amicably calling him "little Copperiield," and compliments his friend on his looks(287). Be ngxt becones a romantic magician, who, with a word, transforms David's "'little loft over a stablef" into a large room which seems to David like a "little landed estatew(289). Like a dream- filled romance heroine, David falls asleep "among pillows enough for six," dreaming "of ancient Rome, Steerforth, and friendship" (289). 132

David's meeting with Steerforth in the morning again recalls Pelham's meeting with Glanville. Steerforth, like Pelham's idol, plays the exquisite Eastern dandy. Where Glanville is seductively posed in an apartment luxuriously fitted with cushions and carpets, Steerforth lounges in a splendid room that is "red- curtained" and "Turkey-carpetedW(290), And, as Glanville is surrounded by mirrors, even in the interstices between the bookshelves, David notes that "a cheerful miniature of the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little round mirror over the sideboardU(290). As in Pelham, the Byronic figure's association with mirrors suggests his obsession with self-presentation and his desire to control his environment. It also suggests his diminutive status. He, and al1 his Eastern play-acting, can be viewed within this "little round mirror" as a "cheerful miniature." Once a great monarch in a small, insignificant school, a great gentleman in the midst of a group of young boys, Steerforth is now a hero of insignificant inns and cof fee-houses .'' This romance with Steerforth culminates not with David, however, but vicariously with "little Em'ly," David's childhood

double, When still at school, Steerforth expresses interest in meeting a sister of David's:

"You haven't got a sister, have you?" said Steerforth,

yawning ,

"No,Ir 1 answered. "Thatfsa pity," said Steerforth. "If you had one, 133

1 should think she would have been a pretty, timid, bright-

eyed sort of girl. 1 should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield." (87)

Although David has no sister, he knows one girl, "pretty little Em'ly," who is pretty, timid and bright-eyed of whom he wishes to tell Steerforth(lO5). Em'ly is established as David's adopted sister, child-lover and double early in the novel. Visiting Peggottytsfamily in Yarmouth, David meets a bright-eyed orphan, who, like himself, never knew her father. Innocent child-lovers, they sit "lovingly" on their "little locker side by side," "exchange an innocent kiss" outside Em'ly's boat-home, and look so full of health and pleasure that Mr. Peggotty, Em'ly's uncle, calls them "two young rnavishesn( 36 ) . The triangle involving David, Steerforth and Em'ly continues into adulthood. Steerforth, like the later Harthouse, expresses his desire to experience a new sensation. David introduces his friend to the Yarmouth family circle where Steerforth, playing his own callous game, charms the group. Em'ly is particularly struck by the captivating gentleman who has the power to fulfil her dream of becoming a lady, She laughs at Steerforth's stories "until the boat rang with the musical sounds"(316). Steerforth displays an interest in Em'ly also when he discovers the former childhood intimacy between David and Em'ly. As the pair nostalgically recall their "old wanderings" and David's previous devotion to Em'ly, Steerforth is "silent and attentive," 134 observing them thoughtfully(317). He takes David's arm as they leave the quaint boat-home, and calls Em'ly a "most engaging little BeautyW(317).

Like Pelham, David's love for his Byronic friend continues to blind him to his faults, even into adulthood. Countering the novel's Bilduncrsroman impulse, David remains oblivious to Steerforth's cruelty. He cannot perceive his friend's callous attitude towards women and social inferiors, and does not understand that Em'ly's class makes her doubly vulnerable to

Steerforth. He does not anticipate Steerforth's capacity to ruin her and her family, despite numerous opportunities to discern his friend's callousness. One such opportunity occurs when David visits his friend's household. He hears Steerforth's contempt for such as the Peggottys: "Why, there's a pretty wide separation between them and us," said Steerforth, with indifference. "They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not ta be shocked, or hurt very easily. They are wonderfully

virtuous, 1 dare Say. Some people contend for that, at

least; and 1 am sure 1 don't want to contradict them. But

they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like their coarse rough skins, they are not easily

wounded ." (294) Typically David dismisses these comments as a jest, and even the scar on the face of Rosa Dartle does not phase him. Steerforth's face fell, and he paused a moment. "Why, the f act is," he returned, "L did that ." "By an unfortunate accident! "

"No, 1 was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw

a hammer at her, A promising young angel 1 must have been!"

(295 1 David is merely "sorry to have touched on such a painful theme" and never doubts that Rosa loves Steerforth "'like a brother "' ( 295 ) . When David becomes aware of his friend's culpability

concerning Em'ly, he feels morally bound to reject him. Yet he never seriously re-evaluates his assumptions about Steerforth. He claims that his friend is dead to him and that he fascinates him no longer, but he forgives him everything that he might fulfil his last promise to Steerforth to remember hirn at his best: 1 thought more of al1 that was brilliant in him, 1

softened more towards al1 that was good in him, 1 did more justice to the qualities that might have made him

a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I

had done in the height of rny devotion to him. Deeply as 1

felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest

home, 1 believed that if I had been brought face to face

with him, 1 could not have offered one reproach. (455) If Steerforth is dead to David, his image -- the fantasy figure David adores -- is more vivid than ever.

The last stage of David's romance is Steerforth's death, 136 which David renders in a type of apocalyptic imagery that recalls Bulwer's discussion of Byron's death in Enqland and the Enqlish.

Witnessing his world's end, David sees the "wild moon" plunge "headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of nature, she had lost her way and were frightenedW(786). He hears about "great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower, and flung into a by-streetW(787). He sees the "watery walls" of water look

as if they "would engulf the tom"(788) David approaches Steerforth's corpse lying on the shore, and, like a Kaled or a Pelham, mourns the hero, still retaining in his imagination that perfect image of the beautiful hero as he had first known him, "lying with his head upon his armV(795). Steerforth, he mourns, had no need to ask David to think of him at his best, for he "had done that ever." Looking at the dead hero, he wonders how he could change his feelings now(796). The effect of Steerforth's death on David is dramatic. He now assumes Steerforth's role as a melancholy Harold, exiling himself on the continent. Although his grief is ostensibly for Dora, his first wife, his grief for Steerforth engulfs this:

If my grief were selfish, 1 did not know it to be so. I mourned for my child-wife, taken from her blooming

world, so young. 1 mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won mine long

ago. (813) David knows that he has lost "love, friendship, interest," that his "first trust," his "first affection" -- undoubtedly meaning 137 Steerforth -- was shattered, leaving only a "ruined blank and waste, lying wide around" him(813). David roams "from place to

place," with the restlessness of a Harold, "carrying [his] burden with [him] everywhereN(813), He even feels close to death, believing in his worst moments of despondency that he should die

as he travels "from city to city, seeking 1 know not what, and

trying to leave 1 know not what behindW(813-14). David's purposeless "pilgrimage" recalls Harold's. He has "no purpose," he explains, "no sustaining sou1 within me, anywhere"(814). David describes this mourning period in terms of a dream:

1 see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign toms, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets -- the old abiding places of History and Fancy -- as a dreamer might, bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me. (814 Although David claimed earlier that Steerforth fascinates him no longer, he lingers in this dreamy state of rnelancholy. David closes his narrative after his Carlylean redemption

inspired by Agnes and effected by Aunt Betsey. He is supposed to have forsaken his nostalgic love of his friend. Yet David, like Pelham (and Maltravers, who frequently drops out of society throughout both novels), fails to present his reader with a convincinq picture of his final dornestic happiness. His closing words suggest instead that his marriage has led him towards spiritual death rather than rebirth. He sorrowfully says good-bye 138 to his vision of Steerforth and his blind illusions, and leaves us with the impression that his illusions were life-sustaining.

As a mature, disciplined Victorian, he accepts the reality of Agnes and spiritual duty. Now he sees but "one face, shining on

[hirn] like a Heavenly light1'(877). By this light he sees "al1 other objects1'(950). Although this ending is purportedly happy, we are led to suspect that much of David's identity will be eclipsed by Agnes' overpowering light.

As in Pelham, the narrator's deep loss after the death of his friend is parallelled by the overwhelming grief of the Byronic figure's family. When Steerforth's mother hears the news of her son's death, she sits Vike a Stone figureN(798). To David she appears "unchangeable" in her fixed pose, motionless, "rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other sign of lifeN(801). Rosa Dartle, like Mlle de Roseville in Pelham, wastes the remainder of her life mourning the hero who has caused her nothing but pain. David presents a final tableau of Mrs. Steerforth and Rosa as two ghost-like figures who devote what remains of their lives to the memory of the "hero." Mrs. Steerforth is now a "bent lady, supporting herself by a stick," and Rosa is a "sharp, dark, withered woman, with a white scar on her lipt'(875). Both women are entirely paralysed by the death of their Byronic figure. "Thus 1 leave them," David comments, "thus

1 always find them; thus they Wear their time away, from year to yearN(875). 139 David's nostalgic narrative and deification of the glamorous Byronic figure are strikingly reminiscent of Byron's sentimental lyrics, in particular his "Stanzas to a Hindoo Air1'(1824). This extravagantly sentimental lyric, with its heavy homoeroti~~~ overtones, may have played a role in Dickens' conception of David's love for Steerforth. It is the impassioned speech of a lover who mourns his or her lover who may be lost at sea. As in Copperfield, the lost lover is associated with the East, and is referred to repeatedly in association with bedroom pillows and the wafting billows of a consuming squall. The love lyric reads as follows: Oh! my lonely--1onely--1onely Pillow!

Where is rny Lover, where is my Lover? 1s it his Bark which my dreary dreams discover? Far, far away! and alone along the billow?

Oh! my lonely--1onely--1onely Pillow!

Why must my Heart ache where his gentle brow lay? How the long Night flags lovelessly and slowly,

And my head droops over thee like the Willow!

Oh thou! my sad and solitary Pillow! Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking,

In return for the tears which 1 shed upon thee waking, Let me not die till he cornes back o'er the billow. Then, if thou wilt--no more my lonely Pillow, In one embrace let these arms again enfold him And then expire of the joy but to behold him! Oh my lone bosom! Oh! my lonely Pillow! (CPW 6:511) David also associates his friend with sea imagery, the motif of dreaming, bedroom pillows and the East. He recalls Steerforth sitting on his pillow like an Eastern lord, and lying in his bed at night "with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his armn(l40), David even makes a special trip to Salem House, merely to relive imaginatively these evenings with his friend. He lies outside the building, dreaming "of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room" and suddenly awakens to find himself "sitting upright, with Steerforth's name upon [his] lips"(182). David's romantic encounter with Steerforth years later is also associated with bedroom pillows: Steerforth procures a room for David with "pillows enough for six" in which he lies and dreams of his friend, who sleeps in the roorn immediately beside his. And the hero is associated with wafting billows that finally take his life.

Pelham and David's romantic infatuations cal1 into question traditional Bildunqsroman assumptions. We do not know if Pelham 141 will be able to forget Glanville and fulfil the requirements of his new Benthamism. We cannot be assured that David, by the end of the novel has "conquered self-indulgent sorrow and is prepared at last to discipline his affections"(Buck1ey 42). Neither Pelham nor David seems able to shake his "sentimental measlesfl'despite any number of enforcing negative and positive examples, and despite their Benthamite and Carlylean conversions. These novels prompt us then to modify our expectations of the Victorian Bildunqsrornan. Although we often can ascertain a Bildunqsroman impulse in Victorian fiction, we should be wary about imposing a grid-like analysis of development that denies their complexity. Such as Bulwer and Dickens may have borrowed Goethe's three-stage development pattern, but they were also interested in humanity's folly, imperfection, inability to learn and propensity towards romantic obsession. Byronism, within the Bildunssroman context, presented itself as a means of exploring such fallibility. The endings of Pelham and David Copperfield have much in common: the disconsolate tone, the hesitation before closure, the autobiographers' paralysis. Yet David's ending makes us even more uneasy than Pelham's. If Pelham is stifled by his retirement and domestic routine, David is in danger of being extinguished by

Agnes' overpowering light. The extremity of David's Carlylean self-sacrifice is paralleled by Bulwer's aesthetic philosophy, published in The New Monthly, and by Bulwer's later romance, Zarioni(l845). David's vision of Agnes ever "painting upwards . . . ever leading me to something better, ever directing me to 142 higher thingst1(843)recalls Bulwer's description of the artist's spire "insensibly tapering into hea~en'~(Bulwer,"Conversations" 18). David, like Bulwer's fictional artist, is most interested in that which seems "to lie invisibly beyond the spire-like shapeU(Christensen 15). As Bulwer demonstrates in Zanoni, however, to reach "The Mysteries" (Alice in Ernest Maltravers and Agnes in David Copperfield), and be assured of perpetual aspiration upward, one must be prepared for divine self-sacrifice to the "loving laww(Zanoni 118). One must face the Carlylean "Renunciation"("Entsaqen") and "Annihilation" of self ("Selbtst- todunq")(1:129,132). The deep ambiguity of Bulwer's 1840's novels such as Zanoni, however, may also be echoed in David Copperfield, While David's autobiography preaches self-sacrifice and altruism, and acceptance of the "loving law" of Agnes, he writes a self- absorbed autobiography in which he indulges his fantasies about

Steerforth and the nymphs of his imagination. While he knows he must cease, in Christensen's terms, "to contemplate the static shapes of his innermost mind and begin again to participate in the dynamic struggles of mankind," he must first suffer from a self-sacrificing extinction(ll0). While Bulwer and Dickens show that such an annihilation may be philosophically and aesthically satisfying, they also leave the reader with a sense of the hero's ultimately profound loss, and they implicitly show the hero's natural disinclination to make that final submission. The terms of maturity, they seem to hint, are too high, the chance of real human happiness too unlikely. Endnotes

l Macaulay's Cambridge friends, like Macaulay, were numbered among those "hopeful undergraduates" influenced by Byronism. Their periodical, Kniqhtfs, devotes a full article to Byron entitled "Lord Byron -- Past and PresentV(Kniqht's 337-348). It also compares itself to the Liberal(4)- It includes a variety of Byronic lyrics and dramas, and it opens with an editorial, "Castle Vernon," which assumes a Don Juanish tone.

Macaulayfs work was written five years before the publication of Pelham. Bulwer was perhaps familiar with it because of his friendship with Winthrop Mackworth Praed.

3 1 refer here to "grotesque" according to Harpham's definition, as explained in the introduction. De-grotesqueing (or turning into a comic grotesque) refers to the process of removing the frightening incongruity of the grotesque, reducing the grotesque into an ob j ect that is not threatening. Historically, the grotesque has been understood to combine fearsome and ludicrous aspects, Ruskin argues that "the grotesque is, in almost al1 cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful. . there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both elements; there are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to exclude al1 ideas of jestW(251). As Sylvie Debevec Henning suggests, theorists have attempted to "pin dom and then to defuse the disquieting aspects of the grotesqueffby dividing the tense relationships in two, by seeing the grotesque as either comic or horrible, or by reacting negatively (Wolfgang Kayser) or positively (Mikhail Bakhtin) to the "unstable relationships of the grotesque"(l07-8). Linda Dowling explains the concept of the "effeminatusfl within English republican discourse. Effeminacy, she argues, has "nothing to do with maleness and femaleness in the modern sensen(5). It refers back to a "vanished archaic past in which the survival of the community was sustained in an almost metaphysical as well as a wholly practical sense by the valor of its citizen soldiers"(6). John Brown's Estimate of the Manners and Principles of Times(1787), she suggests, was a classic English republican text which warned that English society was being ruined by luxury and corruption. Macaulay, following Brown, in his essayrf'Machiavelli," articulates a vision of ideal citizenship based on ancient Greece. Dowling summarizes his argument that the "good of the citizen and that of the polity are always understood as wholly interdependent and reciprocal" ( 7 ) . Within this context, the "eff eminatusflis "the empty or negative symbol at once of civic enfeeblement and . .. monstrous self-absorptionfl that is dangerous to the welfare of a community. Pope's portrait of Sporus in Epistle to Arbuthnot is such a figure. He represents "not sexual" but "civic incapacity, the dissolution of social categories which occurs when community itself has begun to dissolved into an aimless and self-regarding egoismn(9). '~avid Copperfield's early collection of novels consists largely of eighteenth-century works: Humphrev Clinker, Roderick Random, Pereqrine Pickle, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gi1 Blas, Robinson Crusoe. David also read the Arabian Niqhts, and the Tales of the Genii, which partially explains his associations of Steerforth with the East(E 55). Dickens, like Bulwer, would have heard anecdotes of Byron from the Hunts with whom he became well-acquainted. No doubt, he was familiar with Hunt's biography of Byron, and perceived Hunt's deep resentment against the poet. As a reader of Bulwer's works, and later a close friend of Bulwer, Dickens would have been regularly reminded of tormented Byronic figures and aware of Bulwer's changing attitudes. ' After his return from America in 1842, Dickens remarked: "Lady Blessington wears brilliantly, and has the gloss upon her yet1'(Letters 3~298). In 1845, he still remained close to the Countess. Writing to her from Italy, he expressed his anticipation of seeing her again, and his intention to "corne on Gore House with such a swoop as shall astonish the Poodlet'(Letters 4:302).

a Moers does not clarify which of Dickens' friends made this cornment(Moers 220). " 'Young John' Chivery, " "the sentimental son of a turnkey" in Little Dorrit, dresses with a similar panache when he assumes the role of "Little Dorrit's loverH(m 213,215): "He was neatly attired in a plum-coloured coat, with as large a collar of black velvet as his figure could carry; a silken waistcoat, bedecked with golden sprigs; a chaste neckerchief much in vogue at that day, representing a preserve of lilac pheasants on a buff ground; pantaloons so highly decorated with side-stripes, that each leg was a thrice-stringed lute; and a hat of state very high and hardl'(LJ 215-15).

'O Dickens' own association of dandyism and Byronism is revealed in his satiric depiction of the Gent,, in "Horatio Sparkins". This Sparkins, according to one young gentlewoman, is very "'like Lord Byron;'" an attractive young man with "black whiskers" and "white cravat," wearing a "beautifully-made coat," and thrilling al1 the young women with his would-be mysterious airs(= 355-8). A social lion who is eagerly awaited, Horatio Sparkins arouses curiosity and wonder in al1 the Company. "Who could he be?" they ask. "He was evidently reserved, and apparently melan~holy,~yet he "has such a flow of language" and is "so gentlemanlyn(357). With the confidence of a dandified Byron parading about, this elegant gentleman rtattitudinized with admirable effect, before the partyv(358). 11 One of Byron's famous poems, an ode to Thomas Moore, particularly struck Dickens as material for comedy. First published in the Traveller (1821), Byron's verse reads: My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea; But, before 1 go, Tom Moore, Here's a double health to thee! (CPW 4:125) Dickens' parody of this poem, which he originally wrote to Maclise in 1840, mocks the sentimentality of Byron's poem: My foot is in the house, My bath is on the sea, And before 1 take a souse Here's a shgle note to thee. (Letters 2:79) Dickens kept this little parody in mind when writing The Old Curiositv Shop(1840-41), where he gives the lines to Dick Swiveller. Dick, assuming the role of a foolish Byronic dandy, swaggers "with an extremely careful assumption of extreme carelessness," murmurs this poem to his lover, and looks "gloomily upon herfl(66). Curiously, Dickens gives Mr. Micawber the correct version of these same lines in David Co~~erfield,when he answers Betsey Trotwood's enquiry concerning the idea of emigration: "My dear madam," returned Mr. Micawber, "perhaps 1 cannot better express the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and 1 may add Our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the shore, and our Bark is on the ses/ (DC 58) If Mr. Micawber is allowed to quote the correct version of this poem, "The Bonnetw in Dickens' 1858 Christmas story, "Going into Society," repeats a second silly version of the poem. Told by the dwarf "Chops" that he will be brought into "Society," Bonnet quotes this version of Byron's lyric ''with his eyes seemingly full of tears" : "My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea, And 1 do not ask for more, But 1'11 Go: -along with thee." (CS 216)

l2 In February of 1843, Dickens again was diverted by the self- indulgent melodramatics of Byronism, attributing Byronism to a coal-heaver who succumbs to excessive sentimentality when he drinks too much: There is a heaver who uses it [a hostelry], who, in his sober moments is a merry fellow, but who, after his eighth or ninth pot (1 am not sure which) becomes rather maudlin and Byronical. You will find him in this state any- night when the clock strikes Twelve, staggering past the great lamp-post in the Strand, opposite Northumberland House, and crying "I'm a bloody orphan!" in accents full of grief, This is really a fact. He never says more, and never less; is a sturdy, broad-shouldered, honest fellow; fifty years old, or more; sensitive to a fault in porter, but quite a plain man out of it. Divested of his ariçtocratic status, possessing presence, and contemptuous sneer, this Byronic figure is exposed as a foolish, even lovable booby, providing a moment's entertainment to the onlooker(Letters 3:434). Dickens' 1843 remarks to Miss Coutts similarly reflect his humorous attitude towards Byronism. With joking displeasure, he wrote that if Miss Coutts were not pleased with their evening at the theatre, he would "certainly carry [his] misanthropical impulses into effect, and leave off [his] neck cloth without further noticeH(Letters 3:447-8).

13 When offering advice to a would-be romantic poet who tended toward a melancholy Byronic strain, he suggested that the young man "Leave Byron to his gloomy greatness" and instead Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. (Letters 2955) Although Dickens' characterization of Byron as a gloomy lord mocks the poet's aristocratic melancholy, Dickensr accompanying generalizations about the eccentricities of the "greatest Poets" suggest that he was willing to overlook such a small fault in such a great poet. With outstanding poets, he commented, eccentricities are overshadowed by "a crowd of beautiful and grand thoughts which [bear] al1 dom before them1'(2:155).

" Harold, addressing the ocean, wrote, "Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow -- / Such as creation' s dam beheld, thou rollest nowu(CHP 4:1637-38). Viewing Niagara Falls, Dickens echoes Byron: The broad, deep, mighty stream seems to die in the act of falling; and, from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which is never laid, and has been haunting this place with the saine dread solemnity - perhaps from the creation of the world. (Letters 3~210-11) Dickens' continued receptivity to Byronism in the 1840'~~and his attraction to Byron's exalted descriptions of upheavals of water, are also suggested by his admiration of Werner. He repeatedly saw Macready play the lead in a play in which a life-threatening tempest heightens the contrast between the ocean's strength and human weakness . 15 As James Buzzard suggests, by mid-century Byron still held a "peculiar influence on the habits of tourists"(ll5). Although Byron's Villa proved unsuitable for Dickens, he did stay in the vicinity of Saluzzo, at the Villa Bella Vista, up the hill, as he describe? it to Count D 'Orsay, "past Byron's house" ( 167) . Other tourists spots he visited included the castle of Chillon, the "Arrowy Rhone," as Dickens refers to it, quoting Childe Harold(= 271), Rome, and, of course, Venice, with its Bridge of Sighs. Dickens was struck by Venice and particularly the prison and bridge made famous by Byron. In his chapter entitled "An Italian Dream," he recreated the ghostly, romantic atmosphere described by Byron: 1 dreamed that 1 was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, 1 dreamed, The Bridge of Sighs.(= 332) True to the spirit of Childe Harold, Dickens felt a frisson of horror wben, in his dream, he saw the door forever closing behind innocent but condemned prisoners. My "heart," he wrote, "appeared to die within mew(= 333).

l6 Gwendolyn Needham established a mode1 for such discussions with her "undisciplined heart" argument, which compares David Copperfield to Tom Jones. Fielding demonstrates that Tom's innate goodness must be combined with prudence; Dickens shows that natural goodness and prudence are not enough. David must learn the value of a disciplined heart, which she defines as follows: The good heart must have no "alloy of self," must love humanity as well as persons. It must be self-reliant and possess constancy and fortitude in order to be strengthened, not conquered or merely softened, by adversity and sorrow. The good heart must learn the nature of "real truth and love" in order to overcome "evil and misfortune in this world." This is the discipline which David and every good man must achieve. (86) David Copperfield, unlike Tom Jones, however, is written in the first-person. Dickens, therefore, must introduce the theme implicitly through enforcing examples until "David's emotional development reaches the pointwhere David himself can perceive his mistaken impulses and can realize his heart's need for disciplineu(86).

17 Other critics present more simplistic Carlylean readings. Barnes suggests that the novel shows Dickens' demonstration of the Carlylean solution of personal reform through work: "David, Traddles, Peggotty, Ham, and Dr. Strong, " he writes, "are good because they work pr~ductively;~'"Ernily, Malden, Mr. Wickfield and others are lost through idleness;" and salvation "cornes to Mrs. Gummidge, Micawbes, and Mr. Dick when they turn to productive work1'(90). Dum's Carlylean analysis of the novel draws parallels between Teufelsdrockh's journey in Sartor Resartus and David's. Each must "renounce the self ish ego, deny imposture, and define his character by diligent work that aims at noble endsW(l0l).

18 Bulwer called his fiction "metaphysical." He was interested in the world of the mind, and saw his heroes and heroines embodying abstract shapes of the heart and soul. Christensen summarizes his aesthetic theory: By %etaphysical" Bulwer means not only "psychological," as most critics have noticed, but more specifically "typical" or "archetypal. 'l His long note to the 1853 edition of Zanoni defines this notion of "type" as a more complicated and subtler form of fiction than "allegory." Whereas "allegory is a personification of distinct and definite things," the "typical" story "takes the thought below the surface of the understanding to the deeper intelligence which the world rarely tasks. It is not sunlight on the water; it is a hymn chanted to the npph who hearkens and awakes below." (19) Edwin M. Eigner discusses Bulwer and Dickens as metaphysical novelists in The Meta~hvsicalNovel in Encrland and America(l978).

lg Dickens became acquainted with Bulwer in the late 18301s, when Bulwer was emerging as a prominent playwright with The Lady of Lvons(1838) and Richelieu(l839) -- the period of Ernest Maltravers and Alice. Dickens read Bulwer's plays; we know that he read Paul Clifford and liked it(Letters 2:233n); and we know that he was eager to read Ernest Maltravers. In October 1837 he asked Forster for a copy, expressing his anxiety to read the novel(letters 1:320). Given Bulwer's and Dickens1 growing friendship in the late 18401s, it is likely that Dickens read more of Bulwer's novels than is documented officially.

'O In Godol~hin(1833)~Bulwer's narrator notes that Godolphin falls prey to that %est common disease to genius . . . nympholepsy"(l23). In a footnote to The Last Davs of Pompeii(l834), Bulwer explained that to "sec a nymph was to go mad, according to the classic and popular superstitiont'(296n). Christensen turns to Walter Pater to explain this aspiration for the ideal. "To appropriate the phrases of Pater's essay on Leonard," he comments, "the artist is 'smitten with a love of the impossible' and seems 'to those about him as one listening to a voice silent for other men"' (82).

" Both Ernest and David are haunted by the ghosts of these lovers. After Florence's death, the narrator of Ernest Maltravers asks: "When shall that altered aspect [of Florence] not pass as a ghost before his eyesm(EJl9~4). David is also remorseful about the results of his misplaced idealism, although he does not fully comprehend his culpability: "Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the image of the dear child as 1 knew her first, graced by my young love, and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!"(768).

2 2 A beautiful, posing boy with Byron-like ringlets, pale face, a "thin rnustache curling downward'' and "gloomy and half-sarcastic mouth," Castruccio is strangely reminiscent of Macaulay's Claudio, Caesar's gothic double. He has an "extremely slight and thin" figure, an effeminate bearing, and overly large and expressive eyes. He is also a conspicuously vain, dandiacal poseur, who attempts to make an egregious, pseudo-Byronic appearance: He was not dressed as people dress in general; but wore a frock of dark camlet, with a large shirtcollar turned dom, and a narrow slip of black silk twisted rather than tied round his throat; his nether garment fitted tight to his limbs, and a pair of half hessians completed his costume. It was evident that the young man (and he was very young- perhaps about nineteen or twenty) indulged that coxcombry of the picturesque which is the sign of a vainer mind than is the commoner coxcombry of the mode. (m 1:119) An 1837 version of a Glanville or Pelham, Castruccio is reduced in a number of ways: his posing is obvious, unsophisticated acting; he is little more than a boy, attempting to play a satiated Byron of 35; he is physically diminutive, blatantly unoriginal, and he is unable to play to his audience. Where Pelham and Glanville creatively played their Byronic roles with social adeptness, Castruccio, a "&y, speechless, supercilious-looking man," throws a "damp" over his audience, and is as unwelcome a visitor as "a ghost" ( 1 :119 ) . 23 Maltravers is initially attracted to the would-be Byron. Like Byron and Shelley, they spend a romantic day rowing on Lake Como with Castruccio reading his poetry to Ernest. Castruccio as poet-reader has al1 that is required to capture his companion's attention: Caesarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favour of the reader. His own poetical countenance- his voice, his enthusiasm, half-suppressed-the pre- engaged interest of the auditor-the dreamy loveliness of the hour and scene (for there is a great deal in time in these things!) -- Maltravers listened intently. (m 1:127) Castruccio, however, appeals to Ernest in no deep or permanentway. Earnest quickly comprehends that "he Chas been) listening to melodious but feeble mediocrity"(l:127). He returns home, "'This poor Caesarini, "' he cautions himself, " 'may warn me against myself1"(1:128).

24 AS discussed earlier, Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit and Hard Times associates the Byronic with shallowness and moral vacuity. In the context of Steerforth's Byronic play-acting, it is useful to refer to another curious reference to Byron, in The Old Curiosity Shop. At Mrs. Jarley ' s Waxworks stands a wax statue of "Mary Queen of Scots in a dark wig, white shirt-collar, and male attiren that is "such a complete image of Lord Byronu that the young ladies touring the waxworks "quite screamed when they saw it" (OCS 216-17 ) . Elfenbein has noted, Dickens' curious cross-dressing of Queen Mary as a Byronic hero suggests, among other things, the homoeroticism Dickens associated with Byron. The reference also suggests Dickenst sense of the utter artificiality of the hero, who is reduced to a wax, (and female) posing figure in a white shirt. z5 The speaker of the poem is a woman, but Byron's audience read his poetry biographically. The speaker's desire for her lover may have been read biographically, as Byron himself expressing the desires of his "naked heart." Chapter 3

Charlotte Brontë's Shirley: The Corsair Seen in the Sober Dawn

The favourite Byronic heroes were beginning to look

like last night's decoration seen in the sober dawn. (Felix Holt 327) Nineteenth-century female novelists, unlike their male counterparts, often cast a cold eye upon Byronic figures. Caroline Lamb, in Glenarvon(l816), envisioned an unequivocally wicked Byron-figure, a gothic villain. Emily Brontë in Wutherinq Reiqhts(1847) presented a deeply ambivalent portrait of her

Byronic figure, Heathcliff. And later female novelists such as Charlotte Yonge, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mrs. Humphrey Ward(in The Heir of Redclyffe(l853), The Minister's Wooing(1859) and The

Marriaqe of William Ashe(1905), respectively) tamed, reduced and villainized such heroes. This chapter will be devoted to Charlotte Brontë, a novelist who responded to Byron's poetry 152 153 early in life, and presented a variety of Byronic figures in her juvenilia and later fiction. In The Professor, she, like Bulwer

and Dickens, explored the place of Byronism within the male Bildunqsroman. She demythologized Pelham-like male infatuation, and deflated many legends of Byronism. This chapter will deal largely, however, with her later novel, Shirley, a realistic fiction in which she recasts the legendary Corsair as an enterprising Yorkshire industrialist. It will summarize the similarities between Shirley and The Corsair, show how Brontë reworks specific episodes, and consider the implications of her portrait of the Corsair as one of last night's decorations "seen in the sober dam."

As Winifred Gérin suggests, "the external evidence for the young Brontes' knowledge of Byron's works is . . . very full and conclusivetl("Byronls"1). Patrick Brontë owned Thomas Moore's The Complete Works of Byron, published by Murray in 1833, an edition that included illustrations by Finden. Brontë read Byron's poetry with such eagerness that at the age of thirteen she could quote from Manfred and Childe Harold(Gérin, Evolution 24). She also became familiar with the controversial Don Juan, a poem not considered appropriate reading for girls or women during the period. And she had access to the Keighley Mechanics' Institute

Library, a collection that contained Moore's Life of Byron(a1so 154 illustrated by Finden). Brontë's reading of Moore's biography is evidenced by her letter of July 1834 to Ellen Nussey, which

includes it in a list of recommended reading.' The Brontë children were also avid readers of Blackwood's Masazine, and likely made their first contact with the poet in 1825 in a Blackwood's review of Parry's Last Davs of Lord Byron(Gerin,

"Byron's" 3). At Keighley, the Brontës also had access to a limited number of volumes of Chambers' Edinburah Journal, The

Edinburqh Review, and Quarterlv Review, magazines that might have contributed to their knowledge of Byron(Whone 354). The impact of Finden's engravings on the young Brontes, according to Gérin, was "instant and profound"(Evolution 40). Charlotte made four copies of Byronic landscapes and heroines: "Lausanne," "Geneva," "Maid of Zaragossa," and "Lady Jersey." These steel and copper-plate engravings were signed in 1834, the year Charlotte and Branwell created "Angria," the imaginative world in which they were absorbed for many years("Byronfs" 3). Not surprisingly, Finden's engraving of Lady Jersey became a prototypical image for Brontë's Angrian heroine, Marian Bume(5).

And Brontë frequently adapted Byron's dramatic effects. As Gérin demonstrates, entire scenes and characters in her Angrian work can be traced to Byronic rnodels(7). Like her male contemporaries, Brontë was also fascinated by a number of "Byronic" characteristics that appeared most often in her Angrian character Zamorna. Gerin and Alexander note the fiery satanic nature of Zamorna,* and Elfenbein notices Brontë's 155 satirical Don Juanish take on the hero. In "Corner Dishes: A Peep into a Picture Book," she mocks his llinsufferablenessor irresistibleness, or whatever the ladies choose to cal1 itW(Elfenbein 132; EEW 2:2:93). None of these, however, mentions that Brontë also presents Zamorna as a dandaical poseur, as in the following description of him in Mina Laurv, when he enters a breakfast room with a feigned casualness: . first by himself cornes an individual in a furred morning-gown of crimson damask with his shirt collar

open and neck-cloth thrown by -- his face fresh & rather rosy than otherwise, partly perhaps with health, but chiefly with the cold water with which he has been performing his mornings ablutions, his hair fresh from the

toilette -- plenty of it & carefully brushed and curled --

his hands clean & white. . O O (Five Novelettes 127) This picture of a dandaical, exotic and aristocratie Zamorna recalls Bulwer's depiction of Glanville as a boudoir-Byron, appearing before Pelham in his morning-gown. Brontë developed another such poseur in Jane Eyre. Rochester is more than simply a volcanic Giaour or Lara;) he also is a witty, chatty, capricious and moody charmer who echoes Moore's portrait of Byron. And Jane, like a plain and decidedly unaristocratic Blessington, enj oys a "band of Italian days" with this wonderfully communicative hero who treats her to intimate evenlng conversations(276). Rochester also is a theatrical creature of mobility. He dresses up as a gypsy, mystifying and 156 shocking women from behind this disguise. And he enjoys a game of "dishonest coquetry" with Blanche Ingram, pretending to be her lover, and playfully accepting the role of Corsair which she assigns him(331).'

Brontë, like Dickens, also received her Byron at second hand through Bulwer.' Through Keighley? as the 1841 library record shows, she had access to six of Bulwer's works: Enqland and the Enqlish(1833), Pelham(1828), The Disowned(l828), Paul Clifford(l830), Euqene Aram: A Tale (1832) and Pilqrims of the

Rhine(l834)(Whone 353-355). Ernily Brontë's diary entry of June 26, 1837 shows that Charlotte and Branwell borrowed at least one of Bulwer's novels. She recorded that Branwell was reading Bulwer's Euqene Aram aloud to Charlotte as she sewed in their Aunt Branwell's room(E. Brontë, Gondal's 187). That Brontë associated Bulwer and Byron is suggested by a comparison she makes between her own fictional characters and these mens'. "Bulwer and Byron heroes and heroines are very well," she wrote to W. S. Williams on March 11, 1848. "[Tlhey are al1 of them handsome; but my personages are mostly unattractive in look, and therefore ill-adapted to figure in ideal portraitsU(Wise, Letters

2:197). Brontë also read Fraser's, and perhaps read Magi~and

Thackeray's attacks on him. And she was familiar with Punch, which published Thackeray's earliest version of The Book of Snobs in 1846. In these vignettes, Thackeray ridicules Bulwer, Lady Bulwer, and Disraeli. Brontë echoed both Byron and Bulwer in The Professor, casting a Byronic figure in a Pelham-like narrative and deflating many aspects of Byronism6 F.irst, with her Byronic figure, Hunsden, she scrutinizes the romantic conception of a Byronic aristocrat who espouses republlcan sympathies. Hunsden, like Bulwer's Glanville, may advocate republicanism, but he also is intensely proud of his ancient family lineage, and seeks to return his house to its former "pristine" prosperity(28). As the narrator observes, Hunsden even tends towards arrogant despotism himself. He likes to "arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours"(37). By deflating this myth, Brontë anticipates later novelists such as George Eliot and Anthony Trollope who present more obviously fraudulent Byronic figures posing as political radicals. Brontë deflates a second romantic myth that Bulwer presents uncritically in both Pelham and Ernest Maltravers, that of a

Byronic figure suffering from a tragic, guilty romance with a lower class woman. Brontë's outspoken heroine, Frances Henri, bluntly inforrns the "tragic" Byronic lover, Hunsden, that he may have admired such a woman, but he "'never seriously thought of marrying her1"(262). "'1 am sure"' Henri asserts, that this woman

"'filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a wife"' (262).' Brontë's cynicism about such "romances" 158 was shared by such as Dickens and Eliot, who, in Copperfield and Romola, expose the superficiality of their Byronic figures' attachments to women like little Em'ly and Tessa, Brontë, like Bulwer and Dickens, also explores Pelham-like male infatuation, but casts a colder eye on it. Crimsworth does not idolize Hunsden, as Pelham does Glanville. Instead, he feels a strange mixture of fascination and hostility toward him. The tension between these two men is increased by a problematic imbalance of power between them. Hunsden, unlike Crimsworth, enjoys a position of authority in X---- , and Crimsworth therefore interprets his benevolence as a demonstration of power. He strikes back at his benefactor, denying him any show of gratitude. Brontë develops this antagonistic "romance" with the

pair ultimately becoming united through a woman, Frances Henri. The men solemnize their vicarious union by wrestling playfully, as Crimsworth describes: . . . he swayed me to and fro; so 1 grappled him round the waist; it was dark; the street lonely and lampless; we had then a tug for it, and after we had both rolled on the pavement and with difficulty picked ourselves up, we agreed

to walk on more soberly.' (243) Brontë's inclusion of this spirited scuffle in the dark suggests her interest in the potential violence underpinning an imbalanced relationship like Pelham and Glanvillefs,a possibility that Bulwer and Dickens bypas~.~ Brontë also examines the Ernest Maltravers-Smilean hero who conquers his "sentimental measles," by employing the cynical, witty, Byronic Hunsden who comments on the herotsweaknesses. Hunsden teases Crimsworth about his naivety, sentimentality, pride, inflexibility, moodiness, and nympholepsy. He especially mocks Crimsworth's sentimental views on women, and laughs at

Crirnswcrth's assumption of self-reliant, imperious poses after his romantic disillusionments. Hunsden's comments also enlighten the reader about the comical appearance of Crimsworth's monomaniacal earnestness. Wielding his cigar, he hints at Crimsworth's extreme foolishness, scolding the earnest hero for racing by him "like a stem-engine"(32)1° Lastly, Brontë deflates her Byronic figure, Hunsden, by allowing him to live on to the end of the narrative. While Bulwer's Byronic figures, Glanville, Mordaunt, Aram and Castruccio, al1 die tragically like Byron himself, Hunsden lives on and becomes Crimsworth's neighbour in the English countryside. He visits the hero frequently, plays the role of a father to Victor, Crimsworth's child," and becomes a familiar figure at Crimsworth's domestic hearth. This ending not only deflates Brontë's romance between men, offering a satiric rather than a tragic ending, but it also shows her ambivalence about Hunsdents continuing influence on Crimsworth's family circle. Since her daydreams first began, she had been longing for a Corsair; and here he was, not kneeling at her feet, but standing over her, -- as became a Corsair. At any rate he had mastered her now, and she could not speak to him. (The Eustace Diamonds 101)

In Shirley, Brontë turned from posing dandies to an even more popular Byronic figure: the Corsais. This figure appealed to

Victorian romance novelists, who approached the figure in a variety of ways. Some focused on novel-reading heroines who dream about, and sometimes eventually find, proud and ruthless Byronic figures. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, in The Doctor's Wife(18641, wrote a character study of such a heroine. Isabel Sleaford, who becomes infatuated with the Byronic Roland ~ansdell," sighs "to sit at the feet of a Byron, grand and gloomy and discontented'' (64). She imagines herself involved with "Ernest Maltravers, the exquisite young aristocrat," "Eugene Ararn, dark, gloomy, and intellectual, with that awkward little . . . murder preying upon his mind'' and "Steerforth, selfish and haughty and elegantV(66). She would even, Braddon's narrator comically notes, "have worshipped an aristocratic Bill Sykes, and would have been content to die under his cruel hand"(64). George Eliot in Felix Holt, showed the dangers of women's misguided romanticism, with her Byron-reading heroine, Esther Lyon, caught in the spell of Harold Transome, a Byronic figure who has "a padded yoke ready for the neck of every man, woman, and child that depended on 161 himW(538). Charlotte Brontë and Anthony Trollope in Jane Eyre and The Eustace Diamonds, inverted this subject comically, presenting pragmatic heroines(B1anche Ingram and Lizzie Eustace) who claim to dote on Corsairs but are busy themselves plundering for booty. Shirley, however, falls into a slightly different category, the social and political romance featuring enterprising and destructive Corsairs. Mary Shelley wrote one such novel, the historical fiction, Valpersa(1823), a bleak portrait of an Italian Byronic figure, which emphasizes the hollowness of his immoderate ambition. Shirley also resembles Shelley's even bleaker and apocalyptic The Last Man(1826). This novel portrays a Byronic figure who brings plaque and death from the east. George Eliot also wrote two such novels. Rornola(1862-3), an historical novel possibly modelled after Val~erqa,'~ considers the hollowness of egoistic ambition. And Felix Holt, like Shelley's The Last Man, transports a destructive Byronic figure back onto English soi1 after his Childe Harold-like travels. Harold Transome returns to England with ideas of women's subjugation and a pose of political radicalism not underpinned by conviction.

At first glance, Shirley çeems to have little in common with The Corsair. One is a poem, the other a novel. One is high romance, the other realistic fiction, set within a specific time- frame. One is an Oriental tale with a maritime setting; the other is set in Yorkshire. The Corsair was published in 1814, Shirley not until 1849. A closer look, however, reveals the striking similarities between the two works. Brontë's characters parallel Byron's. Robert Moore, like Conrad, is an enterprising leader, dark-featured, alienated, grave, austere, shrewd and pragmatic. His only weakness, like Conrad's, is his attraction to a Medora- like woman, Caroline Helstone. Caroline resembles Byron's heroine." She is beautiful, extremely vulnerable, lonely, and in love. And Shirley is Brontë's Gulnare, a vibrant, strong and courageous heroine who sharply contrasts with Caroline. Brontë's romance plot also corresponds with Byron's. Moore, like Conrad, becomes involved with Caroline, then removes himself physically and emotionally from her, and returns to his enterprises with renewed vigour. Caroline, abandoned like Medora, pines for her lover, then gradually falls so il1 that her life becomes endangered. Like Conrad, Moore then undergoes a sudden fa11 in fortune and is rescued by Shirley, who, like Gulnare, initially assumes an unconventional masculine role, then suddenly resigns it and disappears from the text.

Brontë does more than simply reproduce The Corsair, however. She reworks and transforms it, adapting a variety of episodes from the poem, re-evaluating Byron's characterization of Medora, Conrad and Gulnare, and challenging Byron's rigid divisions between male and female worlds. She also employs a third-person male narrator who guides the reader through the novel. Because Shirley mirrors The Corsair so closely, this discussion will move through the two works sequentially, considering what Byronic material Brontë's narrator adapts and how he does it. Shirley opens with a scene of coarse revelry that neatly parallels Byron's original banqueting scene. Byron's poem opens, like a Shakespearean play, with a group of low characters, feasting pirates, who boast, drink wine and sing by the campfire. Mira Stillman, in her analysis of The Corsair, suggests that Byron's narrator allows these "Pirates' attitudes and actions" to condemn themselves(Stillman 40). Their loud swaggering chant only "seemed a song" to "ears as rugged" as the rocks(Corsair 1:46- 47). Like the rocks, the pirates are callous and hard-hearted, gleefully boasting of their predatory life of destruction for material gain, eager to "seize" the next "spoilW(1:58). In the first chapter of Shirley, Brontë comically inverts this scene to establish her masculine world of noisy, predatory poseurs. Her group of urirefined banqueters are curates who, like Byron's pirates, are invaders (frequently attacking each other's houses), 15 and raiders (plundering al1 the cakes, puddings, beer and beef in the larders). Like Byron's pirates, the curates drink wine by the fire until they grow so loud and insolent that their little parlours become places of great "uproar" that need "a constable to keep the peaceW(l4). In this satirical inversion of Byron's scene, however, the pirate-curates' empires are not enemy camps or ships, but Yorkshire households, their captives not Turks, but resistant housewives such as "Mrs. Gale" whose sou1 revolts "absolutely" against the curates' commariding tones(l1). 164 Despite their boasting and loud noise-making, they exhibit little bravery, The only hazards they face are spells of bad weather that would deter only frail old men such as Austenls Mr. Woodhouse. With "unintelligible zeal," the narrator sarcastically notes, "they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine, or drink tea, or sup with eachothert'(9). After this noisy carousing, both texts shift to quieter scenes to contrast their heroes with the lower, comedic characters. Unlike his noisy men, Conrad is a silent "lonely straggler" who slowly ascends the "rock-hewn way" to reach his watch-tower(l:133-34). Because Conrad is as unapproachable as a hermit, his men wait for the appropriate moment to speak with him. "'We dare not yet approach,'" one comments, "'thou know'st his mood, / When strange or uninvited steps intrudet"(l.:137-38). Also unlike his men, Conrad is known for his monkish abstinence and his preference for simple foods: Ne'er for his lip the purpling cup they fill,

That goblet passes him untasted still -- And for his fare -- the rudest of his crew Would that, in turn, have passed untasted too; Earth's coarsest bread, the garden's homeliest roots,

And scarce the summer luxury of fruits, His short repast in humbleness supply With all a hermit's board would scarce deny. But while he shuns the grosser joys of sense, His mind seems nourished by that abstinence. (1:67-76) 165 This apparent contrast between Conrad and the pirates quickly erodes, however, with the narrator's presentation of the hero. Conrad's monkish gravity, silence and aloofness do not indicate a mental or moral elevation, but merely denote his more earnest pursuit of the deadly pirate trade. Similarly, the bloodthirsty hero may refuse to drink from the "purpling" cup, but he enjoys drinking (metaphorically) from a "purpling cup" filled with the human blood he sacrifices. Conrad's hermit-like abstinence from rich foods likewise does not indicate that he is above worldly desires. Rather, his abstinence nourishes a more dangerous appetite -- his craving for power, material acquisition and the destruction of his opponents. Although he is supposed to represent the forces of revolt "against the established powers of an old and corrupt order," he is treated ironically as "self- seeking, cynical and seigniorial"(Frank1in 78). As Stillman suggests, Conrad is al1 that his men are and more(41)? Like The Corsair, Shirley moves from a raucous to a silent scene, from a warm and sociable parlour to the counting house of Hollow's Mill. AS the scene opens, Moore keeps a noiseless watch in his counting-house, waiting for the return of waggons full of machinery. Like Conrad, Moore prefers to be alone. He spends many nights alone in the counting-house, and he often walks for hours alone on the moors, despite the real danger that he will be shot by one of the many men hostile to him. Aware that Moore prefers solitude, the curates, like Conrad's pirates, are reluctant to visit the hero. As the sociable Malone ~omments,'~'Mooreis a 166 strange, shy man, whom Che] never pretendcs] to understand1"(19). For the "'sake of [Moore's] sweet Company only,'" Malone adds, he "'would not stir a step1"(19). Like Conrad also, Moore is a

solemn, sober man, known for his abstinence. The Yorke family, for instance, knows enough not to order up the case of spirit-

decanters when he visits(l70). Moore's austerity extends to his Conrad-like preference for plain, simple food. If Conrad eats the "coarsest bread" in solitude, Moore, hermit-like, shuns the meals

prepared by him by his sister and survives instead on simple food such as plain loaves of bread and mutton chops that can be cooked on a convenient and unpretentious gridiron. The hero's spartan

habits are reflected also by the plainness of his make-shift living quarters. The "boarded floor" is "carpetless," and the sole furniture is a table and three or four "stiff-backed green- painted chairs" that look as though they once furnished a farnthouse kitchen(27). Brontë's narrator, however, treats his Corsair's austere habits and grave marner with telling satire. He satirizes Moore's Conrad-like reserve, calling his business secrets "complicated and often dismal mysteries" that the hero keeps "buried" in the "sepulchre" of his breast(l40). This suspiciously empty hero who associates himself closely with "Hollow's-mill," discloses his profound secrets only occasionally for such exalted purposes as

scaring Joe Scott or giving "a start to some foreign correspondent"(l40). Moore's abstinence, like Conrad's, is also treated satirically, although Brontë's slippery narrator at first 167 presents this quality favourably. The sombre and respectable Mrs- Yorke, for instance, approves of Moore's "abstemiousness" and "habitua1 gravity," but her character and opinions are called into question by the narrator. The narrator at first contrasts the abstinent hem favourably with other cowardly and self- indulgent manufacturers. Sugden and Sykes murmur feeble excuses to justify the tipple they need to bolster his courage, but Moore is too self-disciplined and brave to need any such drink: Moore with al1 his faults might be esteemed; for he had no moral scrofula in his mind, no hopeless polluting taint,

such, for instance, as that of falsehood; neither was he the slave of his appetites; the active life to which he had been

born and bred had given him something else to do than to join the futile chase of the pleasure-hunters: he was a man undegraded, the disciple of Reason, not the votary of Sense.

(1471 Comparing him with the warlike Rector, Helstone, the narrator continues to applaud Moore in the same apparently unambiguous manner : The same might be said of old Helstone: neither of these two would look, think, or speak a lie; for neither of them had

the wretched black bottle which had just been put away any charms; both might boast a valid daim to the proud title of "lord of the creation," for no animal vice was lord of them: they looked and were superior beings to poor Sykes. (147-8) While ostensibly commending Moore's noble abstinence, however, 168 Brontë's narrator hints that Moore is as much a slave to desire as his companions, that 1ike them, he has joined the "futile chase of the pleasure-hunters;" his pleasure is merely of a different order. Although he has no appetite for food and drink, he has an ungovernable thirst for domination and self- aggrandizement, as we understand fully by the close of the novel. In these early scenes in The Corsair and Shirley, both heroes are also presented as gothic villains. Byron ascribes to Conrad many of the physical characteristics of such dark figures as Radcliffe's Montoni and Schedoni. His cheek is sun-burnt, we are told, "his forehead ris] high and pale," his "sable curls" are dramatically dark, he has a "glance of fire," and is often seen wearing an unseemly scowl(l:203-4,196). This theatrical appearance, Stillman argues, is complemented by Conrad's dramatic posing, which Byron's narrator reveals by focusing on the difference between Conrad's real feelings and his posturing. The hero pauses, for instance, after his visit with Medora, taking the time to assume an appropriate countenance to mask his feelings before he returns to his men: He bounds -- he flies -- until his footsteps reach The verge where ends the cliff, begins the breach, There checks his speed; but pauses less to breathe The breezy freshness of the deep beneath Than there his wonted statelier step renew; Nor rush, disturbed by haste, to vulgar view; For well had Conrad learned to curb the crowd, By arts that veil, and oft preserve the proud; (1:533-540) Aware of the effect of his appearance on others, Conrad controls his pirates with appropriate looks. His "lofty port," "distant mien, / That seems to shun the sight," the "solemn aspect," and the "high-born eye" are al1 "wielded to command assentN(l:541-5). When need arises, he can choose to win loyalty with his enchanting voice, seducing his followers with his "deep yet tender melody of toneW(l:550). Stillman suggests that one "cannot help suspecting . . . that Conrad 'flings' his coat for effect, and that when the narrator speaks of Conrad bending with 'all' the courtesy he 'deign'd' his friends, he is making fun of this regal condescension"'(48-49). If Byron hints at Conrad's theatricality, Brontë's narrator highlights Moore's. Moore is dark and foreign, "rather a strange- looking man," he tells us, with a "most anti-British and anti- Yorkshire look;" he is "thin, dark, sallow" and "very foreign of aspect, with shadowy hair carelessly streaking his foreheadw(33). This exaggerated foreignness and gothic appearance, do not, however, fool the sensible ladies of Moore's neighbourhood who conclude that he is an actor or poseur, Hamah Sykes calls him a "'solemn puppy"' and Miss Pearson thinks he is "'some sort of a sentimental noodle,"' and believes that there is a "'good deal of affectation"' about him, with his '' ' dark hair, "' and " 'pale face1"(175). A friend and sometimes champion of Moore narned Mr. Yorke also jokingly suggests Moore's fraudulence. When his young 170 daughters defend the hero, saying that he is "'too bonnie to be false"', and that he " ' looks too sorrowful to be false, ' " Yorke cynically comments that Moore's good looks are proof that "'he is -- a scoundrel,"' and warns that the "'sentimental buck is the greatest cheat of a11 "' ( 172 ) , Brontë's narrator also highlights his hero's Conrad-like desire to dominate others with his poses in "Noah and Moses," a chapter recounting Moore's confrontation with a group of vandals. The narrator initially shows how Moore intimidates his fellow manufacturer, Sugden, who arrives at his counting-house to support him. Warned by a signal from his foreman, Moore prepares himself for Sugden's arrival, assuming a cold and dismissive marner and keeping his eyes on his newspaper. When Sugden initiates conversation, the hero maintains his deliberately aloof pose, and answers Sugden with "some slight sound, which, though inarticulate, might pass for an assent"(l41). Brontë's narrator comments satirically on Moore's posing. Although his newspaper was "not absorbingly interesting," it now occupies him fully(l40- 41). Even when Moore provides Sugden with a beverage, he does so without moving from his regal, commanding position, opening his cupboard without rising(141). When the vandals arrive, Moore listens to their speeches coolly, waiting for the appropriate moment to surprise and intimidate them. He chuckles drily before encountering them, a "deep dancing ray of scorn" displayed in his eyes(148). When he finally responds to the garrulous vandals, he reacts suddenly and with great effect, defying them to oppose him, and supporting his words with actions. He whistles to Sugden, who emerges from the counting house to arrest the ringleader, then prevents the leader's rescue with another effective gesture. He pulls out a hidden pistol and wields it authoritatively, warning the insurgents that both "barrels are loadedu and that he is "quite determined!"(l53). Thus confirming his authority, Moore guards the counting house against any possible assaults, parading "backwards and forwards along the front of the mill, looking meditatively on the ground, his hand hanging carelessly by his side, but still holding the pistolU(153). If Conrad and Moore are successful actors, they are also adept stage-managers. Conrad's ability in this capacity is shown in his strategy to burn his victims' ships and city while they sleep, using disguise and subterfuge to counter his enemies' numbers. Moore's ability to stage-manage events effectively is shown in his dramatic quelling of the rioters' attack on his rnill. Outnumbered, he also wins by subterfuge. His attackers do not realize that he has learned beforehand of their attack. Nor do they expect any resistance from him. His "organized, resolute defence," therefore, surprises them completely. He has been prepared for this attack for "days, perhaps weeks," and he astonishes the rioters with volleys of gunshot, overpowering the surprised men with great rapidity, leaving many injured. If Brontë's narrator displays the effectiveness of Moore's acting and stage-management, he also shows the farcical side of 172 such theatricality. He pokes fun, for instance, at Moore's dramatic disappearing act in the third volume, which causes al1 of Briarfield, Whinbury and Nunnely to imagine "forty plausible reasons" for bis absence. The real cause of his disappearance is embarrassing and unheroic. After hmiliating himself romantically, Moore is too embarrassed to return. The narrator also satirizes Moore's drarnatics by showing that Moore enjoys acting the gothic villain -- even when he lacks an audience. He poses while alone in his counting-house. Not liking the contents of some letters he receives, his "nostrils [emit] a derisive and defiant snuffW(l40). With no one to hear him, Moore refrains from bursting altogether into a "soliloquy," but still bothers to conjure up a classically Byronic, devil-invoking glance(l40). In these opening scenes, Brontë's narrator also subtly associates Moore with Satan by echoing Byron's Lucifer of "The

Devil's Drive." In Byron's dark poem, the cannibalistic devil drives his waggons full of wounded men on the route of Napoleon's retreat:

The Devil returned to Hel1 by two, And he stay'd at home till five, When he dined on some homicides done in Ragout, With a rebel or so in an Irish stew -- And sausages made of a self slain Jew,

And bethought himself what next to do -- "And," quoth he, "1'11 take a Drive, 1 walked in the morning -- 1'11 ride to-night; In darkness rny children take most delight,

And 1'11 see how my favourites thrive.

"And what shall 1 ride in," quoth Lucifer then?

"If 1 followed my taste indeed,

1 should mount in a wagon of wounded men,

And smile to see them bleed. But these will be furnished again and again . . . ." (CPW 3:95:1-15) Brontë's narrator echoes this poem by associating Moore, like Byron's Napoleon-Lucifer, with waggons of death. Moore's waggons, carrying his machines, are the catalysts of destruction. They introduce a slow death into the community by depriving workers of employment, and they lead directly to a bloody battle that leaves many wounded. They also carry wounded men. After Moore has successfully defeated a large number of rebels, he orders al1 the injured men to be laid out "'on a couple of covered waggons"' and

"'be removed to Stillbro""(406-7). One of the men also actually calls him a "'divil,"' while the rest leave a note for him addressed to the "'Divil of Hollow's-miln"'(39-40). Moore,

Lucifer-like, is fiendish in his delight in violence and aroused by the prospect of a ride at night-time when evil is active. 174

Brontë's narrator also reworks the rigid gender divisions in The Corsair. Caroline Franklin in Byron's Heroines suggests that "the exaggerated excess which characterizes the sexual stereotyping of Medora and Conrad almost slips into self- parodyU(65). The pirates are ruthlessly predatory, aggressively viewing each ship they encounter as a possible prize. Conrad might be interpreted as an exaggerated "ma~culine'~portrait of "forced sternness, decisiveness verging on rashness, courage verging on callous destructiveness, [and] leadership synonymous with tyranny and self-adulation"(Stil1man 42). In contrast, Medora's extremely traditional "feminine" world is an Oriental

version of the secluded world of the "angel in the house". Rapunzel-like, she waits for her lover in a high tower like a caged "bird of beauty"(Corsair 1:347). This enclosed female world waits upon the masculine world, responds to it, and owes its existence to it, Unlike the pirates' noisy world of danger and

excitement, it is characterized by silence, inactivity and absence. Franklin notes that the "vacuous passivity" of Medora's world is pushed to such an extreme that Byron seems to be questioning the ideal even as he "idealizes its pathosW(67). This possibility is supported by Byron's later introduction of his second dark heroine, Gulnare, who sharply contrasts with Medora. Shirley likewise clearly distinguishes between masculine and feminine worlds, questioning gender stereotyping as the narrator pushes these roles to their limits. Moore's cottage, where Caroline first waits for Robert, is described as an extremely 175 sma11, imprisoning space. It is a "little white houset'with a "little interior," containing a "narrow passage, terminating in a narrow stairN(25). The "crimson carpet" and the crimson baize about the door suggest also that this a place of sacrifice as well as confinement. The narrator tellingly explains that this domestic hearth may be a "snug nest for content and contemplation, but one within which the wings of action and ambition could not long lle foldedH(72). Sensing the narrowness of her female world, Brontë's Medora, Caroline Helstone, asks the hero if he feels "'Hollow's cottage too small . . . narrow and disma1?"'(96). Like Byron's Medora, Caroline is also referred to as a bird in captivity, and she responds to André Chénier's "Ode

à une Jeune Captive," about empty, hopeless suffering(l06). Brontë's narrator also reworks Byron's ambivalent treatment of Conrad as a devoted, chivalrous lover. Byron's narrator seems to hint that Conrad is an unlikely romantic hero. He shows exaggerated contempt for men who fa11 in love, sneering at them as "beguiled / By passions worthy of a fool or child1'(283-84). With his ascetic tastes, he has little need of "ferninine" nurture. He judges love superficially as a weakness against which he must fight. And with women other than Medora he is successful in this struggle: Though fairest captives daily met his eye, He shunned, nor sought, but coldly passed them by; Though many a beauty drooped in prisoned bower, None ever soothed his most unguarded hour. (1:289-292) 176 Although Conrad resists captive beauties, he discovers that he is surprisingly weak in his feelings for Medora. Despite his best efforts, "one softer feeling" is always "quickening" round his heart, a feeling that "would not yet depart1'(281-2). If he is cruel and callous to his enemies, he loves Medora deeply and listens sympathetically to her bird-like lament, wishing that her Song were not so sad. Shirley satirically adapts this with the narrator exaggerating Moore's unsuitability for the role of romantic lover. Like Conrad, Moore considers love as a weakness. Hiding out with Malone in his counting-house, he overstates his contempt for men who fa11 in love, joking that it is better to fa11 in love generally than with one person in particular. This disdain for love translates into an extreme and absurd repudiation of women as a sex. He takes excessive pains, for example, to avoid his sister, Hortense, staying at the counting-house for nights in a row, haunting his "mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his warehouse, till the sickly dam strengthened into dayW(71).Even at dam, Moore avoids returning to the house, choosing instead to dig outside for a quarter of an hour(72). Although Moore, like Conrad, has many opportunities to meet women, he rejects them all, priding himself on his independence from the whole tribe:

"1 wonder how often it has been settled that 1 was to

be married since 1 came to Briarfield! They have assigned

me every marriageable single woman by turns in the district. 177 Now it was the two Misses Wynns -- first the dark, then the light one. Now the redhaired Miss Armitage, then the mature

Ann Pearson; at present you throw on my shoulders al1 the tribe of the Misses Sykes." (29) With excess bravado, Moore explains how he keeps the society of men only, how he deliberately avoids the mischance of meeting any of these women, "'1 visit nowhere,"' he protests. If "lever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a cal1 in their counting-house, where our discussions run on other topics than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than courtships, establishments, dowries1"(29). Brontë's narrator further comments on the Corsair figure as a romantic lover through his portrait of Martin Yorke, a child who voices misogynist attitudes. Martin, like Moore, dramatically exclaims that he hates "'al1 womenites"' and wonders "'what they were made forW'(178).He asserts with bravado that he is uninterested in rnarriage, that he chooses to be a bachelor(l77).

And, like Moore, he laughs at other men who dress themselves finely to attract nomen. In Martin, the attitudinizing Moore is reduced to a vain boy whose masculine posing appears silly and shallow. In the same scene, Brontë's narrator satirizes Moore's unsentimental attitude towards women through Martin's brother, Mark. Unlike the pleasantly youthful Martin, Mark is a old cynic eager to spoil the illusions of others. When the family discusses how Caroline Helstone has defended Moore as unsentimental, Mark drily dispels Moore's false belief that Caroline's defence is a 178 compliment : "Mr, Moore,'' said he, "you think perhaps it was a compliment on Miss Caroline Helstone's part to Say you were not

sentimental. 1 thought you appeared confused when my sisters told you the words, as if you felt flattered; you turned red, just like a certain vain iittle lad at our school, who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in the class. For your benefit, Mr, Moore, I1vebeen looking up the

word 'sentimental' in the dictionary, and 1 find it to mean 'tinctured with sentiment.' On examining further, 'sentiment' is explained to be thought, idea, notion- A

sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts, ideas, notions; an unsentimental man is one destitute of thought, idea, or notion," (178 Mark's revealing comment supports the narrator's insinuation that Moore is as hollow and unsentimental as the mil1 to which he devotes himself. Moore, like Conrad, sometimes appears to be a kind and sensitive lover. On one occasion, he mends Caroline's pens patiently, carefully rules her notebook, even romantically gathers a bouquet of spring flowers for her, tying it together with a "thread of silk from his sister's work-basketN(84). Strangely unwilling to return to his usually all-consuming work, he lingers with her, bending over her desk, glancing at her grammar book, fingering her pen and playing with her bouquet of snowdrops, crocuses and primroses that she feels resemble 179

" 'sparkles of sunshine and blue sky' "(84). If he, like Conrad, can be cruel and callous in the wotld of enterprise, he cm also appear to be soft and tender. He tells Caroline that he has "'two natures, one for the world and business, and one for home and leisure ' '' (287). If " 'Gérard Moore is a hard dog, brought up to mil1 and market, ' '' then '' ' the person [she calls her] cousin Robert is sometimes a dreamer, who lives elsewhere than in Cloth- hall and counting-house'"(287). This little scene of Moore's tenderness seems to follow Byron's characterization of the Corsair as a man who loves deeply and passionately. As we shall see, however, Brontë's narrator presents such scenes only to undermine them. Most frequently Moore is "'Gérard Moore,'" the " ' hard dog, ' not " ' cousin Robert, "' the " ' dreamer . "' The narrator also reworks the romance of Conrad and Medora to dramatize the problematic nature of a Medora-like dependence on a lover for happiness. In Byron's poem, the central love scene opens with Medora pathetically lamenting the long nights she spends waiting in her tower on her "lone couch''(l:371). Outwatching each star, she faces "the chill blast" of succeeding mornings without her lover(l:381). Sometimes she sees ships appear that she interprets as signals of her lover's arrival, as she explains to Conrad later: And still 1 gazed and gazed -- and not a prow Was granted to my tears -- my truth -- my vow! At length -- 'twas noon -- 1 hailed and blest the mast That met my sight -- it neared -- Alas! it past! (1:383-386)

When Conrad does arrive, Medora is overwhelmed with happiness; her vacant world is entirely filled.

Caroline, similarly, is utterly dependent for her happiness

on Robert. She spends entire days alone at his cottage with his demanding sister, dreaming of him and waiting for an opportunity

to be with him. On one such dreary occasion, she is told that

Moore will not return home that evening, and she collapses into a

Medora-like depression, becoming so obviously dejected and

listless that even the maid notes how "'low"' she seems(94). Caroline also fears the disappointment of false alarrns. When the maid hears a horse, she insists that she is mistaken. Less wise on another occasion, she allows herself, like Medora, to listen to ItFalseHopev ( 120 ) : Suddenly the door-bel1 sharply rang -- her heart leaped -- she sprang to the drawing-room door, opened it softly, peeped through the aperture: Fanny was aàmitting a visitor -- a gentleman -- a ta11 man -- just the height of Robert. For one second she thought it was Robert -- for one second she exulted; but the voice asking for Mr. Helstone undeceived her: that voice was an Irish voice, consequently

not Moore's. (121) 181 Al1 afternoon, Caroline's ears are "tortured with the ringing of the bell, and the advent of undesired guests"(l21). After the hero's arriva1 in The Corsair, Medora anxiously provides him with domestic comforts: a specially prepared meal lit by a trimmed "silver lampw(l:433). She offers to dance for him, to sing a Song or play her guitar to "sootheu or "lull" him(lz438). She also invites him to enjoy the delights of literary entertainment, suggesting that they retell such tales as those of Ariadne and Olympia." Franklin suggests that Byron indicates the superfluousness of Medora's offerings: Conrad is uninterested in pleasures of the palate, and he is unwilling to rest long enough to be entertained. His mind is occupied with the

ambush he is preparing, and he is anxious to hurry back to join his men(Frank1in 66-67). Like Conrad, Moore is offered dornestic pleasures. Moore's sister, who functions as a chaperon for the lovers, provides the hero with coffee and plays familiar, soothing music on tha guitar. The narrator describes the atmosphere as warmly domestic.

"Drawn curtains, a clear fire, a softly shining lamp" give the "little parlour" an "evening charmN(lOO). Robert and Caroline, like Byron's couple, have the opportunity to enjoy a variety of amusements. Chess, draughts, backgammon and gossip are al1 considered until Caroline, like Medora, suggests that they read an old tale together, in her case, Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Although Robert, unlike Byron's hero, agrees to these civilized diversions, Brontë's narrator subtly hints that they do not 182 necessarily suit him, remarking that it is "probable that the three there present felt this charm [of the domestic atmosphere] for they al1 looked happyn(italics added)(100). Analyzing Moore earlier in the novel, he questions the genuineness of the hero's domestic side. When Moore smiles, he comments, his "sedate charm" is suggestive "truly or delusively, of a considerate, perhaps a kind nature; of feelings that rnay Wear well at home; patient, forbearing, passibly faithful feelingsW(33). The narratorts series of qualifiers in these two remarks -- "probable," "looked" "truly or delusively" "perhaps" "may" and "possibly" -- suggest that Moore may only be playing the domestic role, that the kind lover is a figment of Caroline's imagination-

As well as plying the hero with unwanted entertainment, Medora offers Conrad unwanted instruction, assuming the role of a spiritual guide who challenges his martial heroism: wilt thou ne'er, My Conrad! learn the joys of peace to share?

Sure thou hast more than wealth; and many a home

As bright as this invites us not to rom: Thou know'st it is not peril that 1 fear,

1 only tremble when thou art not here; Then not for mine, but that far dearer life, Which flies from love and languishes for strife -- How strange that heart, to me so tender still, Should war with nature and its better will! (1:388-397) 183 Conrad, however, does not seem to have the patience to listen to Medora's arguments. As his later words and behaviour suggest, his mind is focused on defying the Turks, acquiring more wealth, and preventing Seyd's attack on the island. Shirley's equivalent scene also focuses on the heroine's attempt to provoke the hero into modifying his desire to dominate. Moore recognizes Caroline's aim, and asks her if she

suggests Shakespeare with t''a view to making me better."' 1s "'it to operate like a sermon?'" he jests(l01). Caroline admits seriously that the play is her lesson. "'It is to stir you,"' she explains, "'to give you new sensations. It is to make you feel your life strongly, not only your virtues, but your vicious, perverse points'"(l01)- Like Medora, she suggests the narrowness of her lover's obsession with acquiring wealth and power. Shakespeare forces him to step "'out of the narrow line of private prejudices,"' to see "'the large picture of human naturef"(91). Coriolanus is a particularly apt lesson for Moore, who, like Conrad, has a "proud patrician" spirit that is unable to sympathize with those weaker or poorer than himself. Caroline's teachings, however, like Medora's, have little effect on the herol'. Asked if he has "'felt Shakespeare,"' Moore ambiguously replies only that he thinks so(104). Asked if he feels Coriolanus to be like himself, he again replies with the ambiguous "'Perhaps 1 haveW'(l04). It soon becomes clear that

Moore treats his lover's arguments no more seriously than Conrad did his. He wonders what put "such notions" in her head, mocks her as a "little democratu who might be in trouble with her uncle, and finally asks her to recite a poem in French about

female captivity, which she does like a "happy, docile

child"(105,107). To Moore, Caroline's lesson is little more than the playful banter that he also hears from the little Yorke girls, whom he also patronizes. Byron ends his romantic scene by transporting the reader into Conrad's mind, using what Stillman terms "merged narration" to reveal Conrad's struggle against his love for Medora(Stil1man 38). After melodramatically giving Medora three kisses, he descends £rom the tower without once succumbing to the temptation of ~rpheus.~~The narrator forms a catalogue of "sounds, things

and activities that help Conrad strengthen his resolve to leave on his adventure," ironically showing that "more than all" these things, Conrad's "blood-red flag aloft" makes him marvel how "his heart could seem so soft"(Stil1man 47;1:529-30). This glorious symbol immediately restores him to his "former selfW(I:534). Stillman suggests that Byron satirizes Conrad's departure by showing how he responds to Medora with "melodxamatic posturing" and a tone of Nsuperficiality and condescension," referring to himself artificially in the third person(47): "Again -- again -- and oft again -- my love! If there be life below, and hope above, He will return -- but now, the moments bring The time of parting with redoubled wing: The why -- the where -- what boots it now to tell? Since al1 must end in that wild word -- farewell!

-0 -....*,...,...... ~.,***.*..**..,...... Nor be thou lonely -- tbough thy lord's away,

Our matrons and thy handmaids with thee stay;"

( 1: 450-461) Conrad does not seem to comprehend Medora's love. Without much thought, he assures her that her handmaids' Company will sustain her in his absence. Shirley's narrator ends his love scene in a similar fashion by revealing Moore's thoughts as he returns home after the romantic evening. The hero becomes "grave, almost moroseu(108), Like Conrad, who remenbers himself when he sees the blood-red flag, Moore remembers his true allegiances when he sees his dark mill:

As he stood leaning on his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight, al1 alone -- the hushed dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round -- he exclaimed,

abruptly : -- "This wonlt do! There's weakness -- there's downright ruin in al1 this. However," he added, dropping h

voice, "the phrenzy is quite temporary. 1 know it very well:

1 have had it before. It will be gone tomorrow." (108) When Moore again sees Caroline, he is entirely changed. His manner is "cousin-like, brother-like, friend-like, anything but lover-like'1(l17). Caroline feels that he is "no longer the same man," or that "the same heart did not beat in his breastu(l17), Yet Moore's sudden coldness is no new experience for her. After other evenings when her Robert has been "almost animated, quite gentle and friendly," he was "sure to be frozen up again" the next morning(89). Brontë's narrator ernphasizes his hero's capacity for such cruelty. Visiting the rectory, Robert first makes Caroline understand that it is his duty to It'get on,"' "'that it won't do for [him] to be romantic,"' then thoughtlessly teases her with kisses that he claims as a cousin(l24). Moore's parting lines closely echo those of Byron's hero: "One kiss -- one more -- another -- Oh! Adieu!" (Corsair 1:465)

"1 kiss you because we are cousins; and being cousins, one -- two -- three kisses are allowable. Caroline, good-night." (124) Moore does not seriously consider how Caroline feels, how seriously she will suffer when he callously removes hirnself from her life. Left by their lovers, Medora and Caroline return to a death- like existence. Although Byron's narrator describes Medora's disintegration with pathos, he also ernphasizes the extremity of her collapse, perhaps, as Franklin suggests, drawing attention to the problematic nature of the gender roles in the poem. He highlights Medora's imprisonment, describing his heroine return "with sickening sou1 within the gate"(l:503). Byron describes her physical breakdown. Her face becomes "pale" and "still," over every feature "sorrow" fixes its unerasable marks; her large 187 loving eye grows frozen as it gazes on "vacancy"(l:491-4). Brontë's narrator emphasizes her heroine's increasing imprisonment, her disturbing silence, and her physical collapse even more forcefully. Caroline, looking in the mirror, sees the growing signs of her misery: She could see that she was altered within the last month; that the hues of her complexion were paler, her eyes

changed, -- wan shade seemed to circle th-, her countenance was dejected: she was not, in short, so pretty or so fresh

as she used to be. (197) Brontë's narrator uses his heroine's condition, however, to devise a more explicit critique of society's gender roles. More

like Byron's Julia in Don Juan than Medora al this point, Caroline considers her tragic fate in the context of prescribed gender roles. Julia's famous articulation of the problem of women living only for men's love reads as follows: "Man's love is of his life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence; man may range The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart, Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange Pride, fame, ambition, to fil1 up his heart, And few there are whom these can not estrange; Man has al1 these resources, we but one, To love again, and be again undone." (DJ 1:1545-1552) tike Julia, Caroline speculates on the contrast between her own life and Moore's. She tries to understand the "perplexities, 188 liabilities, duties, exactions" that keep him so preoccupied(l91). She endeavours to "realize the state of mind of a 'man of business,' to enter into it, feel what he would feel, aspire to what he would aspire"(l91). Her conclusions echo Julia's: "Different, indeed," she concluded, "is Robert's mental

condition to mine: 1 think only of him; he has no room, no leisure to think of me, The feeling called love is and has been for two years the predominant emotion of my heart; always there, always awake, always astir: quite other feelings absorb his reflections, and govern his faculties." (192 In the chapter entitled "Old Maids," Brontë's narrator continues to examine the tragically circumscribed lives of women who are socialized only for love. Caroline first considers the plight of women like herself who may never marry in a society that offers them few alternative occupations. Then, visiting two old maids, she grows to understand and sympathize with them, recalling with a new awareness how Moore spoke of one such woman callously. He amused himself, she remembers, by comparing "fair youth -- delicate and attractive -- with shrivelled eld, livid and loveless~(l97). Jestingly, he repeated to her the "vinegar discourse of a cankered old maid1'(198). Now Caroline feels less cornplacent about old maids. "Well might [such a woman] be corpse- like," she thinks, with growing comprehension. Well "might she look grim, and never smile"(201). Her story was one of "cruel, 189

slow-wasting, obstinate sufferingsftthat she has endured with foxtitude(201).

In canto 2, Byron presents his hero's sudden fall. In a remarkably short time, Conrad loses his battle, is imprisoned and falls sound asleep: One hour beheld him since the tide he stemmed -- Disguised -- discovered -- conquering -- talen -- condemned A chief on land -- an outlaw on the deep -- Destroying -- saving -- prisoned -- and asleep! (2:388-391)

The narratorts emphasis on the word "asleep" alludes cornically to Conrad's dramatic fall. With Conrad at his lowest, the narrator introduces a second, contrasting heroine named Gulnare, who is, as Franklin suggests, at the heart of the poem, Gulnare is a bold, active, warrior-maiden who embodies the values of self- determination and the "freedom of sexual autonomyH(Franklin 80). Franklin suggests that Gulnare encapsulates both the excitement and the fear of popular revolt: the dream of Greece freeing herself from Turkish tyranny and the nightmare of the French Terror. The sexual oppression of

a young girl by a Turkish tyrant was a subject certain to engage the sympathies of the widest spectrum of readers. This powerful appeal of the heroine in distress was combined 190

with that of Philhellenisrn, likewise a political sentiment with which most of his readership could identify. (79) When Gulnare enters the poem, she becomes a powerful symbol of revolution. Although she is a slave who is rescued from the burning harem by Conrad, she rejects "both Eastern patriarchal oppression of women and the Western notion of wifely domesticityW(67). Gulnare compares herself with her counterpart, Medora: Though fond as mine her bosom, form more fair, I rush through peril which she would not dare. If that thy heart to hers were truly dear, Were 1 thine own -- thou wert not lonely bere: An outlaw's spouse -- and leave her lord to roam! What hath such gentle dame to do with home? (3:298-303) As Franklin suggests, "Gulnare demonstrates the possibility of a heroine who retains the beauty, romantic love, and selflessness of Medora, but who chooses the role of cornpanion in the

'masculine' sphere of action, rather than the separate domestic role assigned to her by her femininityN(68). Moore, like Conrad, also falls from his heroic status and is relegated to a comic, even unheroic, role. This fa11 is marked by a temporary embarrassrnent over money. At this point, Brontë's narrator introduces his own vision of Gulnare: Shirley Keeldar. Like Gulnare, Shirley is at the heart of Brontë's novel, a striking symbol of individual liberty freeing itself from social and sexual tyramy. Brontë's narrator identifies Shirley with 191 political radicalism, with Helstone's recognition of her free- thinking Jacobite tendencies: "Oh! oh! we are independent: we think for ourselves!" cried Mr, Helstone. "We are a little Jacobin -- fox

anything 1 know, a little free-thinker, in good earnest ." (221) Despite Helstone's patronizing adjectives, Shirley is fundamentally a deep thinking, radical visionary who sympathizes with the passion of Cowper and Rousseau. Unlike Caroline, who finds such romantics "umatural, unhealthy, repulsive," Shirley finds the spirit of subversive romanticism attractive, and suggests that Caroline's disgust is inspired by her "subrnissive" nature(255). Shirley demonstrates her deep visionary spirit by re-writing Milton's version of the creation story. Gulnare-like, she rejects the domestic ideal, the Eve of Milton's fancy, arguing that Milton "'tried to see the first woman, but . . . saw her notW'(359). Instead, Shirley's Eva is the mother of noble outlaws like Prometheus, "giants that strove to scale heaven" and contended with "Omnipotence"(360). Defying Milton's diminishing of Eve and the female sex, Shirley imagines Eva as a female Titan of vast proportions. She wears a veil that is white as a mighty "avalanche," her eyes are "deep as lakes," her Yorehead has the expanse of a cloud," her hands are "mightyW(360-1). Like Gulnare, Shirley rejects Medora-Caroline's world of passivity. Her parents have given her a masculine name intended for an eldest son, and she wishes to retain the property and 192

status of an elder son. She would be a "magistrate and a captain of yeomanry," she haif-jokingly tells Helstone(224). Discussing women and men's roles in society, Shirley argues for the importance of work (or "masculine" occupation) for al1 human beings. Although work alone cannot make a human happy, she argues, it can prevent humans (like herself and Caroline) from "'breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture [love]. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none"'(257)- Responding to the argument that "hard labour and learned professions" "make women masculine, coarse, unwomanly," Shirley questions what it matters whether "unmarried and never-to-be married women are unattractive and inelegantU(257). In the chapter, "A Summer Night," Shirley, Gulnare-like, eagerly aspires to be a warrior queen, fulfilling this role to the greatest degree that she is allowed within the constraints of her society. Although she is not invited to join the men who prepare for the riot, she is trusted to guard the Rectory. You "'want me as a gentleman"' -- she tells Helstone, "'the first gentleman in Briarfield, in short, to supply your place, the master of the Rectory, and guardian of your niece and maids while your are away?"'(374). "'Exactly, captain,"' Helstone replies, comprehending that Shirley bears "'a well-tempered, mettle-some heart under Cher] girl's ribbon-sash1"(374). Shirley's choice of weapon is significant in the context of the weapon Gulnare uses in the killing of Seyd. In Gulnare's case, her "masculine" act of 193

heroism, her rescue of Conrad by slaying Seyd with a knife, is stigmatized by the hero as an unforgivable act of female treachery: an assassination, not the act of a warrior. Revealingly then, although Shirley admits that she "'could manage the carving-knife better"' than the sword, she rejects the

" ' light, "' " ' sharp-pointed"' " ' lady's knife"' that Helstone offers her, and gives it to Caroline, demanding instead "'a brace of pistols,"' the preferred (and bonourable) weapons of the men preparing for the riot(375). Helstone identifies Shirley as a true warrior by offering her his pistols, informing her that if she were "'one of the awkward squad [sbe] should not have them.'" Shirley most resembles Gulnare, however, in her unqualified demand for self-determination and sexual autonomy. Although Shirley is not literally a sexual slave, like Gulnare, she is expected to marry according to her family's wishes, to be a pawn subject to the will of the family's interests. Shirley categorically refuses a marriage of convenience and when put to the test, struggles bitterly for the right to choose her partner, even refusing to obey the head of the family. Asked what she would do if she were already a slave to a tyrant (as Gulnare is), she responds like Byron's heroine, asserting that a "'tyrant would not hold me for a day -- not for an hour. 1 would rebel -- break from him -- defy him1t'(627). Byron employs the figure of Gulnare as a revealing mirror image of Conrad. Both hero and heroine have similar motives. Gulnarets language parallels Conrad's. They are both natural 194

leaders(Stil1man 55). Gulnare gains support from among the guard and she has the opportunity, the charisrna and the ability to lead Conrad's sailors. Shirley frequently calls herself "Captain

Keeldar" and argues that she should be allowed to be a "captain of yeomanry." They are also both natural leaders. Shirley presides over the estate of Fieldhead and even oversees Moore himself. Like Moore, she is defiant, aristocratic and occasionally fierce. She echoes Moore, claiming that she would rise like a patrician to quel1 the hero's insurgents: "'If once the poor gather and rise in the form of the mob, 1 shall turn against them as an aristocrat: if they bully me, 1 must defy; if they attack, 1 must resist, -- and 1 will. "' (300 Listening to Shirley's speech, Caroline notes: "'You talk like Robert,'"(300) she comments. "'1 feel like Robert'" Shirley answers, "'only more fierily. Let them meddle with Robert, or

Robert's mill, or Robert's interests, and 1 shall hate them"'(300). Shirley's dramatic poses sometimes even parody Moore's. To show her "masculine" independence, she takes to the habit of whistling like him(234). She pretends also to be a single man who despises the young women of the neighbourhood. If "'she had the bliss to be really Shirley Keeldar, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Briarfield,"' she jokingly remarks, "'there was not a single fair one in this and the two neighbouring parishes, whom she should have felt disposed to request to become Mrs. Keeldar, lady of the manorU'(234). 195

The narrator's mirroring of his Byronic hero and heroine allows him to critique his hero by subtly contrasting the doubles. He more than hints that Shirley would make a better suitor than Moore, establishing her in this masculine role as Caroline's suitor. She frequently seeks Caroline's Company, draws the timid girl into conversation and invites her to romantic spots like Nunnely Common(233-5). She has no wish to trap Caroline as Robert does. She is a generous suitor who shares everything. Shirley wishes, for instance, to take Caroline with her on a sea voyage:

l1 . . . when Captain Keeldar is made cornfortable, accommodated with al1 her wants, including a sensible genial comrade, it gives him a thorough pleasure to devote his spare efforts to making that comrade happy. And should we not be happy, Caroline, in the Highlands?"

(274) In the Highlands, Caroline will not feel like a poor "'mateless solitary bird! "' who wins Shirley's sympathy(233). Rather, she imagines herself passing "'the shores of those lone rock-islets where the sea birds live and breed unmolestedV"(275). In this wild, natural scene, Caroline hopes to see "'unscared birds covering white sands in happy flocks'"(275). Ironically, Brontë's narrator follows Shirley's invitation with a scene in which Moore describes his work metaphorically as a sea-voyage. Unlike his open and generous rival, he does not consider inviting Caroline on bis trip. Instead, he relegates her to the status of a 196 talisman, "'one of those birds whose appearance is to the sailor the harbinger of good-luck'"(287). Frustrated by this passive role, Caroline responds that one like her who "can do nothing -- who has no power" is but a "poor harbinger of good-luckU(256). Shirley comprehends her rival's influence on Caroline and is frustrated that Caroline meets Robert "as an imprisoned bird would the admission of sunshine to its cage"(281). Shirley also makes a better civic leader than Moore. Although she is patrician in spirit like him, she is not guided by self-interest. She understands the responsibility entailed by supporting Moore financially. She explains to Caroline:

"Caroline, 1 wish to tell you that I have a great weight

on my mind: my conscience is quite uneasy, as if 1 had

committed, or was going to commit, a crime. It is not my

private conscience, you must understand, but my landed- proprietor and lord-of-the-manor conscience." (297) Unlike her male double, who appears to have no conscience,

Shirley comprehends her responsibilities and immediately takes action, donating a large sum of money to the poor in the neighbourhood and appointing an able group of administrators to distribute the funds appropriately and effectively. Shirley's open-hearted charity and wise use of her money obviously contrast with Moore's callous disregard for the poor to whom he also is responsible. After showing that his Byronic heroine is a vast improvement on his Byronic hero, Brontë's narrator portrays, with cutting 197 satire, Moore's Conrad-like fa11 from glory. He manages this first by dramatizing Moore's fa11 in Shirley's estimation. When Shirley first encounters Moore, she identifies with and admires what she believes to be his defiant rebel spirit and his superior courage and strength. To Caroline, she confides her unqualified respect for Moore that underpins her platonic devotion to him and her disinterested support of his enterprises: "He is a noble being. 1 tell you that when [men] are good, they are the lords of the creation, -- they are the sons of God. Moulded in their Maker's image,

the minutest spark of His spirit lifts them almost above mortality. Indisputably, a great, good, handsome man is

the first of created things." (245) Before such a godly being, Shirley contends, she would "scorn to contend for empire ' " (245). Shirley's reverence for Moore and support of him are troubled only occasionally by her vague suspicion that he is not the noble god she believes him to be. She has been known to be fallible in her judgement of character, she admits, and has been baffled in her estimation of men who were "but false gods to adoreM'(246). Once, reflecting on her vague suspicion of Moore, she tells Caroline that she has v"got into the clutch of an eagle with iron talonsw'(297). She fears that she has "fallen under a strong influence, which [she] scarcely approve[s], but cannot resistn(297). Shirley's reverence for Moore is also slightly, but not seriously, tarnished by Moore's other annoying habits: his 198 overbearing melodramatics, his obvious toying with Caroline's feelings, and his habit of getting in between the two women like

a "'black eclipse"'(296). Shirley thus feels free to view the

hero in a comic light. She mocks him for his inflexibility, telling him her surprise that Nature did not give hirn a "'bulldog's head,"' for he is as tenacious as that animal(264).

Sometimes she is so frustrated with his silly dramatics that she threatens to dog him with "dire intent," and use her pistols on him. Reducing him again to animal status, she remarks to Caroline that Moore "is a puppy . . . a quiet, serious, sensible, judicious, ambitious puppy. 1 see hirn standing before me, talking his

half-stem, half-gentle talk, bearing me dom (as 1 am very

conscious he does) with his fixity of purpose, bc.; and then

-- 1 have no patience with him!" (294 'men Caroline denies that Robert is a '"puppy or male flirt,"' Shirley rejects this love-inspired defence, comically calling

Moore "'six feet of puppyhood"' who makes "'a perpetually recurring eclipse"' of their friendship(294-5). Shirley's reverence for the hero, however, does not diminish in any real way until Moore exposes himself to her as a mercenary self-seeker who desires to marry her for her money, not as a noble rebel. Apprehending his meaning, Shirley is outraged to see her glorified Corsair prove himself to be a petty villain. "'Yeu

spoke like a brigand who demanded my purse, rather than like a

lover who asked my heart,"' she cxies(607). Shirley's 199

disenchantment with Moore is sudden and deep. She cries passionately and stares at him with eyes flashing. "'You have pained me1" she continues, "'you have outraged me: you have deceived me! "'(608). Shirley is most outraged, however, by Robert's low interpretation of her disinterested support of him, which makes her actions look like a "'cornplicated, a bold and an uriniodest manoeuvre to ensnare a husbandt"(608). In a grand climax to this scene of disillusionment, she denounces her Corsair as a fallen Lucifer: "'Lucifer -- Star of the Morning!' she went on, 'thou art fallen. You -- once high in my esteem -- are hurled dom: you -- once intimate in my friendship -- are cast out. Go!"'(610). With a melodramatic "sense of Cain-like desolation" that makes his "breast ache," Moore walks away from Shirley utterly embarrassed(620). Following Moore's decline in Shirley's eyes, the narrator chronicles the rest of his fall. In the third volume, he depicts the hero as a restless, driven Giaour, and ironically speculates on the possible exasperation of Moore's horse, an accidental victim of Moore's private war of vengeance. The horse, he suggests, "must have hated these times," for "it was ridden both hard and oftenn(432). The narrator suggests the barremess and stagnation of Moore's world by alluding to him, with a touch of black comedy, as a ghostly giant, thundering through a world of death and destruction: Meantirne, Ruin had her sappers and miners at work under Moore's feet, and whether he rode or walked -- whether he only crossed his counting-house hearth,

or galloped over sullen Rushedge -- he was aware of a hollow echo, and felt the ground shake to his

tread. (434 As Moore is oblivious to the forebodings of this hollow echo, so he is also blissfully ignorant of Caroline's Medora-like collapse into a near-fatal illness. He rides "sharply by" the rectory where Caroline watches for his figure which is "too remote for recognitionn(478).

At this dark period in the novel, the narrator finally unhorses his Giaour. Riding home from Stillbro', Moore is shot in the dark by an unknown assailant. The narrator at first seems to portray this fall sympathetically, depicting Moore with al1 the trappings of a fallen Byron who is suddenly lost in his prime.

Such a touching figure moves even the usually unsympathetic Mr. Yorke who finds Moore:

The spectacle of the sudden event; of the tall, straight

shape prostrated in its pride across the road; of the fine southern head laid low in the dust; of that youth

in prime flung at once before him pallid, lifeless, helpless -- this was the very combination of circumstances to win for the victirn Mr. Yorkets liveliest interest.

(639) Brontë's narrator, however, undermines this sympathetic treatment of Moore by turning Moore's fa11 into farce.

Moore's invalid captivity at the Yorke household comically 201 parallels Conrad's imprisonment by Seyd. The narrator recasts the Yorke family and Moore's attendants as Eastern despots. Yorke, like Seyd, enjoys having "power over a fellow-creature's 1ife1'(639). Mrs. Yorke similarly has a natural propensity for tyranny, and is gladdened by the arriva1 of the invalid which

"set her straight, cheered her spirits, [and] gave her cap the dash of a turbanW(640). Allowing their prisoner no visitors, the Yorkes hold "the young millowner captive, and hardly let the air breathe or the sun shine on himn(641). Moore's surgeon

appropriately is named "MacTurk," and he, likewise, tyrannizes over the patient. Arriving on the scene with "steed afoam,"

MacTurk is described as "dangerous to vex, " "abrupt in his best moodsn and ''in his worst, savageM(642). Adding a further Byronic

touch to the scene, the very large nurse who is hired to watch over Moore is comically named Mrs. Horsfall, an appellation that emphasizes Moore's comic descent. This dragon-like giantess quickly subdues the helpless hero: She made no account whatever of his six feet -- his manly

thews and sinews: she turned him in his bed as another

woman would have turned a babe in its cradle. When he was good, she addressed him as "my dear," and "honey;" and when he was bad, she sometimes shook him. Did he attempt to speak

when MacTurk was there, she lifted her hand and bade him "hush!" like a nurse checking a forward child. (644) Like other de-mythologized Byronic figures in Victorian fiction, Moore is metaphorically infantalized. The posing hero is now a 202 big baby whose six foot frame does little to intimidate anyone. Martin Yorke, one of the Yorke children mentioned earlier, takes a comic view of Moore, furthering the narrator's satirical treatment of him. When Caroline Helstone asks Martin who nurses Moore, the boy responds: "Nurses him? -- the great baby! Why, a woman as round and big as Our largest water-butt -- a rough, hard-favoured old girl. 1 make no doubt she leads him a rich life: nobody else is let near him: he is chiefly in the dark. It is my belief

she knocks him about terribly in that chamber. 1 listen at

the wall sometimes when 1 am in bed, and 1 think 1 hear her

thumping him. You should see her fist: she could hold half a dozen like yours in her one palm. After all,

notwithstanding the chops and jellies he gets, 1 would not be in his shoes. In fact, it is my private opinion that she

eats most of what goes up on the tray to Mr. Moore. 1 wish she may not be starving him." (650-1) Here Brontë's narrator reduces the hero to the level of a joke, echoing an earlier comic scene in which Shirley's large dog, Tartar, frightens the boasting curates DOM~and Malone. Like Shirley, who reduces Moore to six feet of puppyhood, Martin finds humour in Moore's size, and is amazed that Caroline could be "in love with that long thing in the next chamber"(652) The narrator makes a final comic parallel between Conrad and Moore by reworking Byron's romantic prison scene in The Corsair, In Byron's poem, Gulnare visits Conrad in the "high chamber of 203 his highest tower," secretly passing by sleeping guards with Seyd's signet ring(2:366). Brontë adapts this scene in a number of ways. Moore, like Conrad, sleeps in a high chamber, in the Yorke household, He too receives a devoted light-footed visitor who is able to pass by a number of sleeping guards (Mrs. Yorke is literally asleep in bed; the servants are in the back and Mrs. Horsfall is as good as asleep, eating her fil1 in the back parlour). Yet Moore's female visitor is not Shirley, Gulnare's counterpart, In an inversion of the scene, the narrator replaces Gulnare with Medora, foreshadowing her "happy" romantic ending. This switching of heroines in this crucial scene dramatizes the extent of Moore's fall. The hero is now weaker even than the novel's passive heroine. When Caroline arrives in Moore's chanbers, she sees a "tall, thin, wasted figureW(660). Now a "meagre man," he gazes "on his visitress with hollow eyesV'(660). Moore seems to recognize his spiritual poverty as well as his physical weakness. He tells Caroline that the state of his "'mind is inexpressible' -- dark, barren, impotent," and asks her if she can read this in his face. "'1 look a mere ghost,"' he complains(663). 2" Closely following Byron's scene, Brontë's narrator takes another opportunity to undercut her hero by making a slight but significant change in the scene. In The Corsair, Gulnare's departure from Conrad's prison occurs as follows: She pressed his fettered fingers to her heart, And bowed her head, and turned her to depart, And noiseless as a lovely dream is gone. And was she here? and is he now alone? What gem hath dropped and sparkles o'er his chain? The tear most sacred, shed for other's pain, That starts at once - bright - pure -- from Pity's mine, Already polished by the hand divine! (2:535-542) Byron's narrator here provides some general, possibly satirical, advice on women's tears. They are "too convincing -- dangerously dear --." "Avoid it," he warns. A "timid tear" also fell from "Cleopatra's eye," and some men lose not only earth, but also heaven when they fa11 for that "unanswerable" "weapon" of woman's "weaknessN(2:545-552).

Shirley answers Byron's scene by suddenly reversing roles. Moore, rather than Caroline, suddenly sheds a tear. He first calls Caroline to him: "Corne still nearer, Lina, and give me your hand -- if my thin fingers do not scare you." She took those thin fingers between her two little hands -- she bent her head "et les effleura de ses levres" (1 put that in French because the word "effleurer" is an exquisite word). Moore was much moved: a large tear or two coursed down his hollow cheek. (664-5)

In the context of Byron's farewell scene, Moore's tear is both humorous and suggestive. Comically, the "unmanned" and "impotentu Moore might be accused of practising the traditionally "ferninine" art of gaining sympathy with woman's "spear and shîeldW(663-4). 205 In this context, Caroline, like Byron's hero, should ask herself whether Moore's grief is real, or whether he, like a black haired Cleopatra, would have her "Consign [her soulj to man's eternal

foe, / And seal [her] own to spare some wanton's woe!" Brontë's narrator also neatly connects this tear with Medora's first lament to comment further on the implications of the passive heroine finding her wishes fulfilled. In this early

scene in Byron's poem, Medora calls to the absent hero, asking him as a last favour, to shed one tear for her at her grave: "My fondest -- faintest -- latest -- accents hear: Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove; Then give me al1 1 ever asked -- a tear, The first -- last -- sole reward of so much love!'' (1:359-362) Medora, of course, never lives to know Conrad's sorrow over her death, never knows if Conrad finally does reward her with a sacred tear, Caroline, luckier than her counterpart, receives this reward, but one suspects that his tear falls from self-pity rather than from deep love or remorse. The context of Conrad's tear for Medora -- Medora's grave -- also casts a dark shadow over Moore's tear. Brontë's narrator continues his satirical portrait of Koore through Martin Yorke. Martin shares Moore's great skill at stage- management, dramatically and authoritatively moving his players about like pawns. Like a would-be Moore, also, he works towards a selfish end, going to great efforts to obtain a kiss from 206 Caroline as his just recompense. Martin, the narrator comments, however, rnisjudges "the quality of his own nature," holding it "for something lower than it wasU(666). When the opportunity arrives for him to exact his kiss, however, he instinctively decides not to abuse his position of trust. He lets Caroline go without even trying to obtain his payment. Martin's gallantry satirically comments on Moore's. The older hero, after receiving Caroline's kiss on his hands, informs her that he will demand his own back in the future: "'1'11 keep these things in my heart"' he ungallantly tells her, "'That kiss 1 will put by, and you shall hear of it one day"'(665). Before allowing a "happy" romantic union between his Conrad and Medora, Brontë's narrator develops the "tragic" possibilities of Caroline's Medora-like collapse. As in The Corsair, Caroline becomes fatally feverish, and is depicted as pale and feeble in a shroud-like white dressing gown, She envisages Moore's Conrad- like tragedy of returning to find her dead: "'But he will not know 1 am ill, till 1 am gone; and he will corne when they have laid me out, and 1 am senseless, cold and stiff"'(480). Although this possibility of Moore's return to Caroline's death- bed seems tragic, Brontë's narrator subtly insinuates that his "happy" romantic ending has even more tragic possibilities. In the novel's last chapter, "The Winding Up," he narrator literally winds the story up with the fulfilment of Caroline's romantic dreun. Caroline's happy ending, however, is depicted as a crucifixion scene. She rnounts upon a sculptured stone which was 207 "once, perhaps, the base of a cross"(731). Her arms are raised on each side, like Christ's. Gazing out, she sees "three dusk trees" and beyond them "a soiitary thornM(731). She is "not unhappy that eveninq; far otherwise," but still sighs from her station, Feeling a hand encircle her waist, she notices the white of a star against the "deep red" of "bonfiresW(731)- This suggestive imagery of innocence, sacrifice and death is accompanied by Caroline's new awareness that it is not her mother whose arm encircles her, but that of an "intruder," Robert, who, like death, cornes upon her from behind(731). If this happy romance ending is dubious, Brontë's ending of the Gulnare-Conrad plot is even more so. Byron's critics have often speculated on his handling of Gulnare at the end of his poem. After rescuing the hero, and returning him safely to his ship, Gulnare suddenly and unexpectedly resigns her authority to Conrad, and assumes traditionally "ferninine" poses. She "drops her veil, and stands in silence by; / Her arms meekly folded on that breast1'(3:517-518). While she, like Conrad, was "at once above" and "beneath her sex," she now chooses to adopt a conventional female role(3:514). She then drops out of the poem entirely. Franklin accounts for this sudden submission and quiet disappearance, suggesting that Byron was demonstrating the impossibility of female autonomy in a patriarchal society. In dramatic terms, she also suggests that Byron's "bold portrait of an active heroine had to be cornpromised at the end of the tale, if Conrad himself was not to be entirely eclipsed." Gulnare had 208 simply upstaged Conrad, and had to be removed. Shirley, like Gulnare, becomes strangely submissive in the final scenes of Brontë's novel and disappears in the penultimate chapter. Her submission and disappearance occur, however, within a different context. She submits not to Robert, but to Robert's brother, Louis, who dominates the third volume and concludes Shirley's story. This introduction of a second hero, a male double of Moore, may have been prompted by Byron's introduction of Conrad's double in Lara, a poem which Byron described as a sequel to The Corsair. Why Byron considered it such has puzzled scholars. The heroes have different names. They exist during different tirne periods. And they are in different situations. Byron explained what he saw to be the similarities between Conrad and Lara in the first "Advertisement" to the anonymous first edition : The Reader -- if the tale of Lara has the fortune to meet with one -- may probably regard it as a sequel to The Corsair; -- the colouring is of a similar cast, and although the situations of the characters are changed, the stories are in some measure connected. The countenance is nearly the same -- but with a different expression. (Coleridge, Works 3:323n)" Conrad and Lara are similar, but not exactly the same, which forces the reader to turn from Lara to Conrad and then back to Lara, trying to understand the puzzling mirror images. Byron encouraged this kind of cornparison by enveloping Lara in mystery. 209 We know few facts about him and we are not provided with enough information to evaluate his integrity. 22 Following this structural model, Brontë's narrator brings Louis Moore into his narrative. The similarity between brothers is so startling that one cari be taken for the other, as Caroline Helstone discover when she mistakes Louis for Robert: She descended [the stairs] in a subdued flutter: yet more was she fluttered when Hortense seized her hand at the parlour-door, and leading her to Robert, who stood in bodily presence, ta11 and dark against the one window, presented her with a mixture of agitation and formality, as though they were utter strangers, and this was their first mutual introduction. Increasing puzzle! He bowed rather awkwardly, and turning from her with a stranger's embarrassment, he met the doubtful light from the window: it fell on his face, and the enigma of the dream (a dream it seemed) was at its

height: she saw a visage like and unlike, -- Robert,

and no Robert. (465) Caroline is perplexed by Louis, as readers of The Corsair are perplexed by Lara. Who is this figure who is like, but unlike, his original? Brontë's narrator emphasizes Robert and Louis' similarity by showing how the two men deliberately confuse Caroline by physically switching places. Robert taunts her with his enigmatic likeness to Louis, saying, "'--but now, see us together. Change places- Change again, to confuse her, Louis. -- 210

Which is the old love now, Lina?"'(465). Like a questioning reader of Lara who might compare Conrad and Lara, Caroline begins to compare "the real Robert" with the "new Robert1'(466). Brontë's narrator hints at Louis' Lara-like role by echoing

Byron's description of Lara. Explaining Lara's name, Byron in a letter wrote: And "the name was liquid which put it into my head for itls(sic) smooth & antique sound --."(Letters 4:143). The penultimate chapter of Shirley, similarly, seems to echo this description of Louis' name in a dialogue between Louis and Shirley: "You certainly give me pain," said [Louis]. "Zt is hardly a week since you called me your future husband, and

treated me as such; now 1 am once more the tutor for you: 1 am addressed as Mr. Moore, and Sir; your lips have forgotten

Louis. IV "No, Louis, no; it is an easy, liquid name; not soon forgotten." (720) Lara is a phonetically liquid name because it consists "of sonants and vowels, sounds without stopsM(Stillman 70). Stillman suggests that Byron uses this liquidity to show that Lara has "no internal stops, no code of any kind that might preclude any action as morally unacceptable" (70) ." Louis ' antiquated liquid name is similarly suggestive. Like a former despot of France, his desire for power knows no boundaries; he has no internal stops to prevent him from engulfing Shirley's identity. Shirley's description of Louis' name as unforgettable also may allude to 211 Byron's description of Lara as a f'spirit"that "seemed to dare you to forget!"(Lara 1:382)." Stillman suggests that Lara "does not complete The Corsair so much as it reviews it"(71). It reverses the "order of the plot" and "challenges the reader to re-examine his estimate of Conrad and to reconsider the implications of The CorsairW(7l). The third volume of Shirley, similarly, forces the reader to reconsider Robert in the light of Louis. Louis is not, however, a Byronic figure. He is based instead on a Keatsian model. As Tony Burgess

has noticed, in It 'Quiescent Adoption' '' : Keats in Shirley," Moncton Milne published The Life, Letters and Literarv Remains of John Keats in 1848 -- the year Brontë was writing Shirley. In these letters, Keats explicated his concept of "negative capability." Burgess argues that Brontë was one of the first to respond to Keats's poetics. In Shirlev, she presented "negative capability" "incarnate" in Louis Moore: Louis negates himself to

exist in others, to colonize others' experience(Burgess 6). While "Robert" is a conventional "robber," interested in material acquisition, Louis is a "robber" of souls, an insidious negative

signifier who invades and annihilates. As Shirley's romantic partner, he is more dangerous than Robert, not "probably" more benign, as Caroline assumes. Brontë's narrator demonstrates the difference between the bandit-Corsair and Keatsian "negative capability" through the motif of Shirley's whistling. Shirley, who feels more like Robert than Robert himself, imitates him by whistling. Gulnare-like, she assumes the gestures of a masculine 212 identity to assert her independence and strength. Louis, however, was Shirley's original teacher. He taught her his whistle, his language, his habits. As Burgess argues, when negative capability becomes "predatory" it becomes "positive capability." When Louis adopts Shirley's identity, she "ceases to existN(13-14). Shirley's "Annihilation," then, is even more disturbing than Caroline's sacrifice. Louis, whose liquid personality knows no boundaries, is "perhaps" more dangerous than his Corsair brother.

Readers of Shirley may feel that they are standing on constantly shifting ground. Why is Louis mirrored with Robert? Which romantic mode1 is preferable, which worse? Are Robert and Louis gods? Or demons? This confrrsion may result from Brontë's following another aspect of The Corsair: Byron's analogical structure. Stillman comrnents on Byron's structure:

The meaning of the irony in the tone of the poem becomes completely focused in its analogical structure: While Canto I begins with the Pirates' Song describing their

social attitudes from their point of view, Canto 11 begins with a narrative description of the activities of Seyd's men and their social attitudes from their point of view. . . . Since the analogy between the Pirate and Moslem attitudes and behaviour is striking, and since each condemns itself in the same way, one can conclude that Byron is 213 writing satirical allegory about violent societies which are based on tyranny and conquest. When, in Canto II, the two cultures meet in battle, the similarity of purpose is emphasized, and Conrad and his men appear more violent than

their "pagan" enexnies. (52) Brontë's narrator develops just such an analogical structure by constantly showing the sameness of apparently different characters and groups of characters. Louis and Robert represent

Byronic and Keatsian models but their actions have the same results, the subjugation of their romantic partners. We also sense the eerie sameness of the other male characters in the novel, despite their overt differences. Mr. Yorke and Mr, Helstone take opposite political positions, but their warlike antagonism is similar, as is their attraction to frighteningly passive women like Mary Cave. Mr. Helstone and Robert have different politics and even become enemies, but their belligerence, pugnacity and domination of women are exactly the same. Malone looks so similar to Robert that he is mistaken for him. Even Mr. Hall aligns himself with Louis, making readers wonder if he really is benign. Brontë's narrator also adapts Byron's mirroring of opposing camps by depicting a parodic confrontation between a Methodist parade and a Church of England parade. Great pains are taken in this scene to emphasize the similarity of the two groups. This analogical structure, displaying mirror after mirror, is deeply uncornfortable. The text's insistent doubling of Louis 214 and Robert is particularly so. The differences between them are so insignificant that we may, like the housekeeper at the end of the novel, refer to them as merely l'the two Mr. Moore1s"(740). Both Mr. Moores triumph over and sacrifice their two heroines(Mrs. Robert and Mrs. Louis). And when Louis's engulfing negative capability is combined with Robert's inordinate ambition, the result is unprecedented environmental destruction. The men divide Caroline and Shirley between them, and plan to

"divide Briarfield parish" between them. Robert announces his destructive vision to Caroline(736): "The copse shall be firewood ere five years elapse: the beautiful wild ravine shall be a smooth descent; the green natural terrace shall be a paved street: there shall be cottages in the dark ravine, and cottages on the lonely dopes: the rough pebbled track shall be an even, firm, broad, black sooty road, bedded with the cinders from my mill: and my rnill, Caroline -- my mil1 shall fil1 its

present yard. " (737) Robert announces environmental destruction (and simultaneously the sacrifice of Caroline and Shirley, who are represented throughout the novel aç Nature) and does not hear Caroline's objections. Neither will he hear any objections from Shirley, who bas been effectively silenced by Louis. The only female response at the end of the novel is a silent one, revealed in Mrs. Louis' eyes, which "pierced a body throughl'( 740) .*' Robert is so intent on building his "mighty mill, and a chimney, ambitious as the 215

tower of Babel" that he has little comprehension of what he has destroyed and is destroying(739). And Louis is unlikely to raise

any ob j ect ions. In the preface to his edition of Byron's poetry, Matthew Arnold remarked that Byron %as no licrht, cannot lead us from the past to the future. . . . The way out of the false state of things which enraged him he did not see"("ByronU 160). The same might be said of Brontë in Shirley, who offers us a very dark picture and no obvious solutions. Yet, as Robert F. Gleckner suggests about Byron, the "unconquerable persistence in remaining

sane while expressing that vision [of doom]" seems to "provide a light" of its ownN(Gleckner 230). Critics have sometimes complained about the structural "problems" in Shirley: Shirley's late appearance, Louis's even later one, the contrived romantic ending. Some have criticized these ''problems" and others have condescendingly excused them because of Brontë's grief and depression while writing the novel. 2 6 As we have seen, however, Shirley has a clear structural mode1 in The Corsair. Brontë's discovery of Byron's poem might be likened to Joyce's discovery of The Odyssey as described by Eliot in "'Ulysses,' Order and Myth." Using what

Eliot calls "the mythical method," Brontë reworked Byron's poem.

In a rather modern way, The Corsair gave her a "way of controlling, of ordering, or giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchyttthat was characteristic of ber age as well as of Eliotts(Eliot 170). By 216 providing a "continuous parallel" between Shirlev and The Corsair, Brontë gave her reader the enlightening opportunity to see the familiat defamiliarized, The overly contrived ending of Shirley is also deliberate. We are meant to wince when Caroline fulfils a romantic dream worse than death. Even more painful is Shirley's tragic fa11 to the status of a worshipful Kaled, ensnared in her Larats "mental net." And Moore, Brontë's Byronic "hero," is no hero at all. He is impelled to no tragic fate. He feels no ''Byronic" guilt. While he hastens the end of the world of Shirlev, he is blissfully unaware of the fact. Moore's incapacity is a joke, his grief and guilt merely comic falsetto. Sadly but appropriately, Brontë's hero is as morally reprehensible as Thackeray's Byronic-Napoleonic Becky Sharp, but not nearly as bright. Endnotes

Brontë wrote to Ellen Nussey on July 4th, 1834: "You ask me to recommend some books for your perusal; 1 will do so in as few words as 1 can. If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will though 1 don't admire him) Scott, Byron, Camp[b]ell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice, Omit the Cornedies of Shakspeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain of Byron though the latter is a magnificent foem and read the rest fearlessly . . . . For biography, read Johnson's lives of the Poets, Boswell's life of Johnson, Southey's life of Nelson Lockhart's life of Burns, Moore's life of Sheridan, Moore's life of Byron . . . " (Smith, Letters 1:130). Gérin, Alexander and Elfenbein al1 refer to the following satanic sketch of the volcanic Zamorna in Brontë's 1834 "Corner Dishes: A Peep into a Picture Book" : "Oh, Zamorna! What eyes those are glancing under the deep shadow of that raven crest! They bode no qood - . . Al1 here is passion and fire unquenchable. Impetuous sin, stormy pride, diving and soaring enthusiasm, war and poetry are kindling their fires in al1 his veins, and his wild blood boils from his heart and back again like a torrent of new-sprung lava. Young duke -- young demon!"(EEW 2:2:92-3). Rochester likely also owes much to Bulwer's portrait of the eponymous hero in Eusene Aram. Like this volcanic, aristocratic criminal, he retreats into the country after committing a secret crime. When he, like Aram, meets his etherial heroine, he dreams of redemption through her. Jane, like Bulwer's heroine, Madeline, obeys her lover's mysterious injunction not to attempt to learn more about him, and she never seriously considers the possibility that Rochester is a criminal until it is too late. This despite Rochester's disguise as a chained inmate of Bridewell in a game of charades. Rochester's disguise may also echo Euqene Aram. Aram is imprisoned, placed in irons and finally executed. ' Rochester accompanies Blanche on the piano as she sings "a Corsair-song"; she tells him that she dotes on "Corsairs"(225). Blanche also approves of Rochester's disguise as a Bridewell prisoner. She says: "'Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made! "'(230). She finds nothing "more becoming" to Rochester's "'complexion than that ruffian's rouge1"(230). Although in May of 1848 Brontë suggested to W.S. Williams that "Currer Bell . . . could never rnarch with the tread of a Scott, a Bulwer, a Thackeray, or a DickensW(Wise, Letters 2:329), most of her remarks suggest that she shared Thackeray's sense of Bulwer's absurdity. Writing to Hartley Coleridge in December of 1840, she denies that her handwriting reveals that she is a woman, then mocks Bulwer and other male writers, saying: "Several young gentlemen curl their hair and Wear corsets -- Richardson and Rousseau -- often write exactly like old women -- and Bulwer and Cooper and Dickens and Warren like boarding-school misses"(Smith, Letters 1:241). Writing to W.S. Williams that same year she compared Bulwer to Eliza Lynn(a novelist she did not like), and noted that L-e's novels "presented to [her] imagination Lytton Bulwer in petticoats - an overwhelming vision"(Wise, Letters 2:288). In the same letter, she applauded a critic of the North American Review who dealt harshly with Bulwer's novels, writing: "By the bye, the American critic talks admirable sense about Bulwer -- candour obliges me to confess that." Finally, writing to W.S. Williams in April 1848, Brontë praised a novel by G.H. Lewes, suggesting that it deserved a cordial reception far beyond anything due to a "Bulwer or D11sraeli production"(Wise, Letters 2:207). Brontë was likely familiar with Pelham. It was one of the five Bulwer novels at Keighley and it was frequently criticized in Fraser's, a periodical Brontë read(Whone 355). It also was attacked by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, a work Brontë may have read when it appeared in sections in Fraser's in 1833 and 1834(Dressner 22). The Professor resembles Pelham in a number of ways. Both novels are persona1 memoirs, composed by mature narrators after they complete their Bildunssroman journeys. Both are purportedly composed for the reader's edification. And both present a Byronic friend who fascinates the narrator. As well, both narrators, Pelham and Crimsworth, eventually find domestic happiness, and retire to the English countryside where they compose their histories. Both linger over their work, stalling before putting dom their pens and rousing themselves from their romantic daydreaming. Brontë's Byronic figure, Hunsden, also resembles Bulwer's Glanville. Both have long locks, slight figures, mobile faces, and an impressive appearance. More generally, their politics are republican; they have experienced secret and possibly tragic affairs with socially inferior women, and they carry miniatures of these women on their persons. ' Mlle Henri (now Mrs. Crimsworth) speculates about Hunsden's lost love, Lucia, suggesting that she was a woman who "once wore chains and broke themn(261). This description anticipates Brontë's Shirley, who, as we shall see, breaks her chains like Byron's Gulnare. Like Macaulay and Carlyle, Brontë was interested in displaying the grotesqueness of Byronic mobility. Crimsworth critically expounds upon Hunsden's fascinating and strange mobility. Hunsden's features, he comments, "were plastic," his "character had set a stamp upon each, expression re-cast them at her pleasure -- and strange metamorphoses she wrought, giving him now the mien of a morose bull, and anon that of an arch and mischievous girl; more frequently the two semblances were blent, and a queer, composite countenance they made,"(35) This description, hinting at Hunsden's gender mutability, is reminiscent of Macaulay's Caesar. Steerforth's violence is deflected ont0 females like Miss Dartle who ineffectually wages war upon Steerforth as Crimsworth ineffectually wages war upon Hunsden.

'O Although Brontë never mentions having read Ernest Maltravers or its sequel, Alice, one episode in The Professor suggests that she may have. Crimsworth and Maltravers are exceedingly attached to portraits of their aristocratic mothers. When they recover these portraits late in both of the novels, they stare at them intensely and cal1 out to their mothers as if the pictured women still lived.

l1 The text leaves open the possibility that Hunsden is the biological father of Victor, which signals the possible continuation of Crimsworth's vicarious connection with Hunsden through Frances. " Braddon's Isabel Sleaford dotes on al1 fictional Byronic types. She grows up as a "sentimental young lady, whose best employment was to 1011 in a garden-chair reading novels, and who was wont to burst into sudden rhapsodies about George Gordon Lord Byron and Napoleon the First upon the very smallest provocation"(89). Her bright dream is to meet "this wonderful unknown being -- the Childe Harold, the Lara, of her life!"(72). So limited is Isabel's romantic perspective that, on seeing a beautiful English garden she comments: "'1 thought it was only in Italy and in Greece, and those sort of places -- where Childe Harold went'" where one could find beauty(72). The Byronic Roland Lansdell who fulfils Isabel's dreams, writes poetry with romantic titles like "The Alien's Dreamsttand is known as "The Alien." George Gilbert, Isabel's ~ainterestinghusband, in contrast, has "no thought of revolt against the du11 quiet of his lifeW(7). He is one fictional male who never succumbs to the "sentimental measles." He "could sit in the little parlour next the surgery reading Byron's fiercest poems, sympathizing in his own way with Giaours and Corsairs; but with no passionate yearning stirring up in his breastH(The Doctor's Wife 7). l3 AS Safaa El-Shater suggests, Romola echoes Valpersa with its similar setting, time-period and characters. Tito Melema specifically resembles Shelley's Byronic Castruccio. Both Manfred-Corsair figures are treated with cold detachment because of their overreaching desire for power and worldly renown(59-61).

14 Brontë's interest in The Corsair is shown in Gérin's discussion of Charlotte's water colour illustration of the death bed of the Duchess of Zamorna. This, Gérin claims, was inspired by a scene in The Corsair with Conrad's appearance at Medora's death bed. Brontë transposed every particular of Byron's scene, including the velvet curtains, the smoky lamps and the flower- strewn corpse. Branwell also transposed this episode into poetry and prose, Charlotte was so absorbed by this scene that she wrote about it in her Roe Head journal(Gérin, "Byron's" 6).

15 These attacks are metaphorical. As the narrator comments: "Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs. Whipp - their respective landladies - affirm that "'it 1s just for nought else but to give folk trouble. "' By "folk" the good ladies of course mean themselves, for indeed they are kept in a continua1 "fry" by this system of mutual invasion"(l0).

16 Stillman comments on traditional readings of "the Byronic hero" as a rebel: In line with an old tradition, Peter Thorslev believes that al1 of Byron's hero-types are rebels. Thorslev further asserts that al1 of them "stand firmly as individuals outside of society"- . . . These claims are indefensible. While some of the protagonists in Byron's historical and metaphysical dramas are rebels . . . the original and primary "Byronic Hero,'' the Noble Outlaw, for whom Conrad-Lara is the accepted representative, is not. This hero is not a rebel against either the social or moral codes of his world, Gd he does not stand even feebly as an individual "outside of society." He is aloof, hostile, and warlike, but justice concerns him only as cant: he accepts conventional morality so implicitly that he uses it to justify his own morally compromising actions. Al1 indications are -that Byron considers him to be only too typical of man society. (3) Stillman contextualizes this interpretation of the hero within The Corsair: The Corsair is a sustained allegory on the self-righteous manner in which man preys upon his fellow man, and nation upon nation. The poet uses occupation, character and plot to communicate the thesis that war is "Murder unrestrainedeU The pirate life represents the conventional morality of man in society and of powerful seafaring nations like England toward those less strong. In describing the group psychology of the pirate band, Byron exposes traditional attitudes of armies; their leader, the "Byronic Hero," represents a dominant, war-like male, quickened by strife and the subjugation of others. (8) Discussing Conrad's f'chivalry," Stillman suggests: Conrad is a perfect example of chivalry. His chivalric principles of "honorH keep him from murdering Seyd; and his chivalrous gallantry forces him to Save the women at the cost of the battle; but these are precisely the principles Byron satirizes in the second half of the romance. Byron suggests that such notions of honor and gallantry are barbaric and demeaning to the human race because they excuse the murder of husbands if the wives are saved, and they excuse murder on the battlefield if one does not murder in bed. (57) '' Ariadne is deserted by Theseus, and Ariostofs Olympia was loved and then abandoned. '' The many parallels between Robert Moore and Shakespeare's Coriolanus have been discussed by Guy Allen. Even more intriguing, given Brontë's extensive use of both The Corsair and Coriolanus in Shirley, are the parallels between Conrad and Coriolanus. Both discomect themselves from their communities, and both are so individualistic that their only true allegiance is to themselves. Caroline Franklin, discussing the contemporary significance of The Corsair within English politics, suggests that the "image of the disaffected and dispossessed nobleman allying himself Coriolanus-like with his country's enemy, either external, or interna1 . . . was a threatening polltical image with contemporary significance for Britain, at the time of the Napoleonic warsN(78-9). 19 From crag to crag descending - swiftly sped Stern Conrad dom, nor once he turned his head; But shrunk whene'er the windings of bis way Forced on his eye what he would not survey,

a...... *-.....W.--....*.. On her he must not gaze, he must not think, There he might rest, - but on Destruction's brink: Yet once almost he stopped -and nearly gave His fate to chance, his projects to the wave; But no - it must not be - a worthy chief May melt, but not betray to womanfs grief, He sees his bark, he notes how fair the wind, And sternly gathers al1 his might of mind: Again he hurries on . . . . (Corsair 505-521)

2 O The contrast between Caroline's spiritual strength and Moore's spiritual poverty is reinforced by the narrator's use of the Sleeping Beauty myth, with Caroline cast as the suitor, and Moore comically cast as Sleeping Beauty herself. Many of Moore's "suitorstfhave tried unsuccessfully to enter "B~iarfield.~~ Caroline herself has become lost in the difficult forest outside the house, known as Briarmains Wood. One special day, however, the way is magically opened for her. She enters without difficulty by the front door, passes through a house full of sleepers and ascends to the tower to kiss her reclining lover and awaken him from his spiritual death. In Jane Eyre, ~rontëalso inverts the Sleeping Beauty story, with Jane in the penultimate chapter losing herself in the woods around Ferndean manor. When Jane finally finds an entrance, she sees Rochester, like Sleeping Beauty, immobilised, and wishes she could "dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those-lips so sternly sealed beneath itW(JE 552).

" The revised Advertisement which prefixed the three editions of the poem printed with Samuel Rogers' "Jacqueline," (L(I), L(2), L(3)) read as follows: THE reader of LARA may probably regard it as a sequel to the poem that recently appeared [Corsair]: whether the cast of the hero's character, the turn of his adventures, and the general outline and colouring of the story, may not encourage such a supposition, shall be left to his determination." (Coleridge, Works 3:454n)

" Stillman details the many similarities between heroes(69)

2 3 Stillman suggests that Byron, as early as 1806, associated firmness and solidity with moral integrity.

2 4 Although Louis is based primarily on a Keatsian model, there are some similarities between Louis and Lara. Lara is a figure from the past. His story is a sequel to, or a conclusion of The Corsair, but it actually occurs before The Corsair in chronological time(Stil1man 69). In Shirley, Louis is a figure from Shirley's past. He returns, calamitously, to Shirley's life, as a "new Lazarusttwho takes over her tale(Lara, as we recall, concludes with Lara's death). Lara and Louis also are described as older-looking, despite their being in the prime of life. Lara's narrator comments that Lara is "something touch'd by time," although he is not yet "past his manhood's primeN(l:55-6). Similarly, Louis believes he "'looks old for thirty, "' and Shirley agrees, telling him that she "'never regard[sJw him "'as a young man, nor as Robert's junior1"(587). And while Conrad and Moore dominate others largely through their theatrical posing, Louis and Lara seem to have a stronger magnetic influence. We recall that Lara had the power to entwine "himself perforce around [a] hearer's mind" so that there ''he was stamp'd, in liking, or in hateIt(l:371-2). There "within the inmost thought he grewft(l:376).The narrator continues: You could not penetrate his soul, but found, Despite your wonder, to your own he wound; His presence haunted still; and from the breast He forced an al1 unwilling interest; Vain was the struggle in that mental net, His spirit seemed to dare you to forget- (1:377-382) Louis, like Lara, casts a mental net over those he encounters with his magnetic influence. The Yorke family immediately approves of him. Mr. Hall takes hirn as his bosom cornpanion. Even Tartar, Shirley's dog, is swayed by Louis, who can draw him from Shirley at will. Brontë's narrator also appears to adopt Byron's suggestion that the "country" of Lara "is not Spain, but the Moon," a spiritual landscape that predominates also in Endmion(Byron, Letters 4946). Stillman argues that the spiritual landscape of Lara is a dark one in which "daemonic forces are unleashed through which the light of the Sun carmot penetratef'(Stillman 73). Similarly, the narrator refers to Louis as an orbiting sphere. "Louis Moore," he tells us, is a "satellite of the house of Sympson: comected, yet apart; ever attendant - ever distantfl(513), In the "midst of this family-circle -- or rather outside it -- moved the tutor -- the satelliteH(513).

25 Shirlev's final scene of environmental destruction is reminiscent of Mary Shelley's vision in The Last Man after the Byronic Raymond brings plague from Constantinople. This is an intriguing parallel, considering Brontë's narrator's auguring of future evil in terms of an "Indian plague" with its "poisoned exhalations of the EastM(473).

2 6 George Henry Lewes, in his 1850 review of Shirley in the Ediriburqh Review, criticized what he believed to be the novel's lack of unity: Y..in Shirley al1 unity, in consequence of defective art, is wanting. There is no passionate link; nor is there any artistic fusion, or intergrowth, by which one part evolves itself from anothert'(Lewes 164). Biographers tended to explain Shirley's lack of unity by focusing on Brontë's grief. Gérin, for instance, comments: "Perhaps because it was so organically related to the circumstances of her life, Shirley achieved less artistic independence and wholeness than any of Charlotte's books . . . . Yet admirable as the writing is, it might well have been bettes for the book if Charlotte had had the courage to put it aside completely, and wait for the healing power of time to have its effect before resuming it. But this, she realized, would be tantamount to suicide; her will to live was almost dependent cn the ability to work"(390). Conclusion

. . . a combination of Byron, Don Juan, and Bernard Shaw, with a touch of Havelock Ellis for good measure. (F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Pierian Springs" 165) ln his discussion of Byronism, Andrew Elfenbein argues that for Byron's reviewers "the image of Byron's female admirers effectively mediated the fact that many men might have felt just as strongly about himtt(70),Chapters One and Two of this thesis support Elfenbein's theory that "male attraction to Byron was more widespread than surviving evidence indicates"(70). Bulwer and Dickens' nostalgia was shared by nineteenth-century men,

British and American, who read and re-read their Byron, then read their Byron filtered through later novelists. Such as Walt Whitman, who salted his articles with Byron quotations, were quickly identified as Childe Harold-like with "inverted shirt- collar" by audiences well-versed in Byroniana(Zweig 56; Rubin 223). So much did the image of Byron inform the construction of

224 authorial identity that even the twentieth-century novelist, William Faulkner, was prompted by his friends to pose Byronically. Phi1 Stone describes Faulkner sitting for a photograph: "'See there where Bill's collar is open? . . We want him to look like a romantic poet -- you know, like Byron with his head and flowing tie. Except we couldnftput on him a tie like that "' (Blotner 361 ) . If literary history has hidden male infatuation with Byronism behind the legend of women in love with Byron, it also has ignored the appeal of a Byronic authorial voice for women. Nineteenth-century women found more in Byron than a "man to be loved;" many, like Bulwer before them, found in him a literary personality and authorial voice to imitate(Browning, Letters 1:252). Like their male counterparts, women novelists were interested in Don Juanish posing. Frances Trollope, for instance, wrote a long, satirical poem in the style of Don Juan, and, after the success of Domestic Manners of the Americans compared herself to Byron, saying "May 1 not Say like Lord Byron, '1 awoke one morning and found myself famous?'"(Johnston 120). Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the witty social satire Aurora Leish, a verse novel modelled after Don Juan. And Harriet Beecher Stowe enjoyed assuming the pose of a Byronic devil, writing exuberant and irreverent letters from the rakish Aaron Burr in The Minister's Wooinq. Byronic posing also appealed to Charlotte Brontë, who adopted masculine voices in much of her juvenilia and then 226 assumed the mysterious identity of the androgynous and finally male Currer Bell. We can speculate about the significance of such a voice in Shirley. The slippery Currer, like the mobile narrator of Don Juan, or the poet of The Corsair and Lara, offers ambiguity instead of answers. Testing his reader, he asks him to put on "his spectacles and look for the moral"(740). He has no nostalgic delusions about heroism. Like the author of Childe Harold, he laments his age, and the impossibility of heroism. He comprehends the implications of Robert's incapacity to be more than a fallen Corsair. And he depicts the blood-covered field of

Robert's battle, as Byron depicts the battle-fields in Childe Harold, with grim realism. Currer Bell's Byronic voice is also touched with a Thackerayean cynicism. In Shirley, as in Vanitv Fair, there can be no heroes. The Corsair falls from his horse, and Shirley, a valiant new Byronic warrior-maiden, disappears. Brontë's Waterloo -- the annihilation of Shirley -- is also, we discover, the end of Shirley and the end of the world of Shirley. The church bells "clash outu in Briarfield, as the bells ring out before the battle of Waterloo in Childe Harold and Vanity Fair, and the two Mr. Moores celebrate the laws that free Robert's industrial enterprises. As the little group gathers to celebrate the end of their world, Currer Bell's last words might be Thackeray's: "Vanitas Vanitatum." In spite of my strong and supple appearance, 1 am feeling

downright Byronic .., , 1 don't like being James Dean-ish" (Giftsurfer 1)

On a lighter concluding note, it is intriguing to consider the pertinacity of this study within the twentieth century. What echoes and allusions of Byronism still occur? Most obviously, the genres of speculative fiction bave taken up the theme, with alienated Harolds and Corsairs wandering through apocalyptic landscapes. In William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's historical science fiction novel, The Difference Ensine(l991), Byron himself becomes a political dictator, leading a Technocracy in England from Charles Babbage's computing machines. In the genres of detective and crime fiction, we see latter-day Pelhams like Adam Dalgliesh, James Bond and even Clint Eastwood -- aloof, alienated and mysterious, acting as society's secret police. Within romantic fiction, Byronic figures have remained popular, as is most amusingly exemplified in the teenage television romance,

"Beverley Hills 90210." Its Byronic James Deanish hero, Dylan McKay, drives a convertible with an open volume of Byron's poetry lying in the passenger seat. When a friend asks Dylan about the volume, the hero smiles and describes himself as "mad, bad, and dangerous to knowU(Pelletier 1). Even Star Trek: Vovacreur includes an episode in which a holographie doctor reprograms his sub-routines to include Byron's passion and creativity(these sub- 228 routines, unfortunately, conflict, and the doctor alternates, like Macaulay's chameleon-like Caesar, from a De Sadian seducer, to a suicida1 Manfred, to an alienated Harold). Given the biographical work of Leslie Marchand, Louis Crompton and others, it is rather amazing that Byron and Byronism are still associated, in the late twentienth century, with the mysterious, the perverse, and the satanic. A brief Internet search of the term "Byronic," for instance, reveals that young men still identify with Byron. One Internet screen-play presents a photo of a pale-looking, dark-haired, leather-jacketed youth, posing moodily as he leaves a near-empty café. In the inscribed voice-over, this youth -- like a young Bulwer to Mrs. Cunninghan -- melodramatically describes his alienation and world-weariness: How should you imagine my last minutes? Do you see me as

a pathetic figure, exiting the closed café among the other lingerers, taking a few half-hearted steps in pursuit of one or another, then stopping, and only looking longingly after? Or as a Byronic isolate, walking the streets aimlessly, alone, for hours until, exhausted, my feet of themselves

turn for that darkened house? ( Harrow 1 ) This modern day Childe Harold, who calls himself "the Chief" appears in a second shot like a James Dean walking on a dark city street. "Richard the Happy Goth," like the "Chief," also Byronizes himself on the Internet. In his Home Page, he explains that he likes "vampiricism," particularly the "Byronic aspects of it." 229 "It allows [him] to dress up really weird and go up to females and ask if they fancy a bitet'(Ramon 1). How different is this vampiric posing, we might ask, from that of would-be Byrons of almost two centuries ago, who paraded gloomily across drawing rooms, attracting female (and male) attention with their

melodramatic poses. Escruire Gentleman strikes an even more familiar Regency-Victorian chord with its review of one of the musician "Prince's" concerts: It is [Prince's] birthday night. He is onstage in a burntchexry-red jumpsuit cut open in the back al1 the way

dom to the cleavage of his tiny behind. A fabulous dresser, masculine in his feminine clothes, he has always dressed out of his times and just like a prince in his frock coats, rampantly ruffled shirts with fingertip-dragging cuffs, tight high-waisted pants with matching Frenchheeled boots, royal medallions, arrogant walking sticks, tiny boleros with high Beau Brummell collars. He has borrowed from both masculine and feminine figures: the toreador, the languid

Byronic poet coughing in his mffç, the dandy, the fop,

Prince Charming, Coco Chanel. (Baumgold 4) If Prince's sexual ambivalence, Byronic dandyism, and fantastic egregiousness recall Bulwer, his Bulwerian mystification of the public is even more semarkable. Like Bulwer, Prince has twice adopted a new name and public self. First he replaced "Prince" with a symbol. Then he rejected this symbol for the title "The Artist," which has resulted in his being now identified as "'The 230 Artist' -- formerly known as Prince." Listening to the media banter about Prince's alternate identities, we recall Chorley's comments on Bulwer's "satin" personality, and Yellowplushls telling confusion over the identity of ~Sawedwadgeorqeearllittnb~1wig.~' WORKS CITED

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II. SECONDARY SOURCES: NINETEENTH CBNTURY MATERIAL Arnold, Matthew. ''Byron." Arnold: Poetrv and Prose with William Watson's Poem and Essavs bv Lionel Johnson and H.W. Garrod. Ed. E.K. Chambers. 1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948. 160-162. Blessington, the Countess of. Lady Blessinston's Conversations of Lord Byron. Ed. Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Braddon, Elizabeth Mary. "Lord LyttonDttBelsravia 20 (March 1873):73-88. Crowe, Eyre Evans(?). "French Poets of the Present Day." Blackwoodts Maqazine 13 (May 1823):507-514. Dallas, R.C. Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, from the Year 1808 to the End of 14: His Earlv Character and Opinions, Detailins the Proqress of his Literarv Career, and includinq Various Un~ublishedPassaqes of His Works. Taken from Authentic Documents, in the Possession of the Author. To Which is Prefixed an Account of the Circumstances Leadinq to the Suppression of Lord Byron's Corres~ondencewith the Author, and His Letters to his Mother lately Announced for Publication. London: Charles Knight, 1824. Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. 2 vols. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1980. Galt, John- The Life of Lord Bvron. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1858. Gillon, J. or John Wilson(?). "The Candid. No. 2." Signed "R.S." Blackwood's Maqazine 13 (March 1823): 263-274. Guiccioli, Teresa Gamba, Countess. Mv Recollections of Lord Byron; and Those of Eyewitnesses of his Life. Trans. Hubert E.H. Jerningham. London: Bentley, 1869. Hazlitt, William. Lectures on the Encrlish poets. The Spirit of the Acre: Or Contemporary Portraits. London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1955. Hunt, Leigh. Lord Bvron and Some of his Contemporaries with Recollections of the Author's Life, and of His Visit to Italv. London: Henry Colburn, 1828. Huntington, Henry G. Maories: Personaqes, People, Places. London: Constable, 1911.

Jeffrey, Francis. Rev. of Childe Harold's Pilarimase 1 6 2. Edinbursh Review 19(Feb. 1812):466-77. --- . Rev. of Childe Harold's Pilqrimacre 3. Edinbursh Review. 27(Dec. 1816):277-310. --- . Rev. of Sardanapalus, a Traqedy, The Two Foscari, a Trasedy, and Cain, a Mystery. Edinburqh Review 36 (Feb. 1822):413-452.

Lewes, George Henry. Rev. of Shirley. The Brontës: The Critical Heritaae. Ed. Miriam Allott. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. 160-170. Lockhart, John Gibson. John Bull's Letter to Lord Eyron. Ed. Alan Lang Strout. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947. --- .(?) "Letter to the Author of Bep~o." Signed "Presbyter Anglicanus." Blackwood's Edinburcrh Masazine. 3 (June 1818): 323-329. --- . IfRemarks on Don Juani' Blackwood's Edinburqh Maqazine. 5 (August 1819):512-523.

Lytton, Robert. The Life, Letters and Literarv Remains of Edward Bulwer Lord Lytton, by his Son. 2 vols. New York: Harper and -- - Brothers, 1884. Maclise, Daniel. Drawing. "The Author of a 'Life of Byron,"' Fraser's Maqazine 2 (1830):554. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. "Moore's Life of Lord Byron." Critical and Historical Essavs Contributed to the Edinburclh Review. Ed. F.C. Montague. Vol 1. London: Methuen & Co. 1903. 303-342. Maginn, William. "The Gallery of Illustrious Characters No. 7: John Galt, Esq.," Fraser's Maqazine 2 (1830):555. --- . "Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer's Novels; and Remarks on Novel Writing." Fraser's 1 (June 1830): 509-32. Medwin, Thomas. Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron, Noted durins a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822. London: Henry Colburn, 1824. Moore, Thomas. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: With Notices of his Life. Col. and Arr. with notes bv Sir Walter Scott, Lord Jeffrev, Professor Wilson, Thomas Moore, William Gifford, Rev. George Crabbe, Bishop Heber, J.G. Lockhart, Lord Brouqhton, Thomas Campbell. London: John Murray, 1866. Morley, John Viscount. "Byron." Critical Miscellanies. London: Macmillan and Co. Lmt., 1923. 125-173. "On the Librarians of Literary Man." Fraser's Maaazine (May 1831) 408-409. Parry, William-The Last Davs of Lord Bvron: With His Lordshi~~s Opinions of Various Subjects, Particularlv on the State and Prospects of Greece. London: Knight and Lacey, 1825. "Remarks on Don Juan." Blackwood's Maqazine S(Aug. 1819):512-522. Rev. of Ernestus Berehtold: or, The Modern Oedipus: a Tale by J. W. Polidori. The Literarv Gazette, Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, etc. (28 Aug. 1819):546-548. The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantics Writers: Part B: Byron and Reqencv Society Poets. Ed. Donald Reiman. 5 vols. New York: Garland, 1972. Saintsbury, George. A Historv of Nineteenth Centurv Literature. 1896. London: Macmillan and Co., 1922. Scott, Sir Walter. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott 1811-1814. Ed. H.J.C. Grierson, Davidson Cook, W.M. Parket et al. 12 vols. London: Constable and Col, Ltd., 1932-7. --- . Rev. of Childe Harold's Pilqrimaqe 4. Ouarterly Review 19(April 1818):215-32. Smiles, Samuel. A Publisher and his Friends. Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, with an Account of the Oriqin and Proqress of the House, 176801843. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1891. Taine, H.A. Historv of Encrlish Literature. Trans. V. Van Laun. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872. 271-312. Trelawney, Edward John. Recollections of the Last Davs of Shelley and Byron. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1858, Trevelyan, George Otto. The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Vol. 1. Leipsic: Lemmerman & Co., 1876. Whipple, E.P. Essays and Reviews, 1850. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton & Mifflin, 1889.

Wilson, John. Rev. of Childe Harold's Pilqrimacre 4." Edinburqh Review 30(June 1818): 88-120. --- . Rev. of Manfred. Blackwood's Edinbursh Macrazine I (June 1817):289-95.

III. SECONDARY SOURCES: TWENTIETFI CENTURY MATERIAL

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